


Ghosts on Bitter Ground

by Foxwine



Series: Back to the Fold [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Canon, Blood and Violence, Brief appearances by other characters - Freeform, Dragons, Hanzo is not in a good place, M/M, So much trauma, Swearing, Trauma, a moment of Emily/Lena near the end, mention of Widowmaker - Freeform, so many unreliable narrators, suicidal idealization
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:47:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 41,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26756770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Foxwine/pseuds/Foxwine
Summary: The recently recalled and newly expanded Overwatch has found itself with a cash flow issue — they are very rapidly running out of money. Luckily, Genji has an idea, and he just came up with a plan.That the plan just happens to involve Hanzo's brief annual return to Castle Shimada is not a coincidence.
Relationships: Genji Shimada & Hanzo Shimada, Jesse McCree/Genji Shimada
Series: Back to the Fold [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1180190
Comments: 20
Kudos: 61





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> The stories in Back to the Fold can be read alone, however they all exist on the same timeline as each other and sometimes something that happened in one story can have an effect in another. The fics are posted in the order that I would like them to be read in if someone is reading all of them, not in chronological order. This fic is set just over a year before Field of Coltsfoot and Bramble, a few months after the Recall.
> 
> The Overwatch cinematic “Dragons” occurs during this story, between Chapter 3 and Chapter 4. I highly recommend watching it then. Never fear, I’ll put reminders at the end of chapter 3 and the beginning of chapter 4 as well.
> 
> I'm forever grateful and indebted to my beloved partner and sounding board Demolition, who always helps me to make my plots make sense and keeps me from spinning off the rails.
> 
> Despite the timing and the title, this is not a Halloween story.

**Chapter One**

Of all the things Genji had expected when he had joined Winston’s Recall of Overwatch, weekly progress meetings had somehow not made the list. It should have, knowing Winston, but it simply hadn’t come to mind when the invitation to re-join had been presented.

Thankfully, the meetings were usually not entirely boring. Given the nature of Winston’s version of Overwatch, the ‘progress’ discussed tended to be sharing gathered intel, identifying future targets, and planning missions as a group — things that were worth paying attention to. Genji had even found himself enjoying contributing from time to time.

This particular meeting, however, was not one of those times. The discussion of the first topic — some international vigilante that Winston found fascinating and that Genji didn’t care about who had popped up in the news again recently — had dragged on and on without going anywhere for absolute figurative ages, and Genji was bored out of his mind. He had made no effort to hide it either, simply having allowed himself to slump over the table and rest his head on his folded arms as he texted various other members demands to distract him, not caring how obvious the ticking of his fingers was as he typed on a keyboard only he could see.

Though he did make sure to keep the two Junkers and Master Zenyatta in his sight, even though they were already seated as far away from each other as the meeting room that they were all in could allow. Though the smaller — relatively — of the two Junkers seemed preoccupied with sketching away on a tablet and the larger one was impossible for Genji to read given his completely covered face and subtle body language, it was better to be safe than sorry. Even though Genji was out of his armour and the tank top and sweatpants he was wearing instead would not offer much protection if a fight broke out. The Junkers may have decided to join the Recall despite knowing that there were omnics who were already members, but that didn’t mean that Genji had to trust that they wouldn’t suddenly change their minds about being in an organization with representatives of their most hated enemies.

“Let’s table the discussion for now,” Winston finally said, drawing Genji’s attention away from where he had been dividing it between keeping an eye on the Junkers and the game of checkers that Doctor Ziegler had started with him when the maps attempting to trace and predict the movements of ‘the soldier’ had come out. “There is another matter I’d like to bring up — one of more, ah, immediate importance,” the gorilla went on, fussing with the pile of notes in front of him.

Genji rolled his eyes, not caring that anyone could see it since he had his helmet off. If whatever it was that Winston wanted to talk about was so important, he should have brought it up first instead of going on and on about the vigilante. Either way once Winston was finished, Genji decided that he would bring up the trip he needed to make to Japan. It was nearly May already, and Genji had no intention of allowing the abrupt, unplanned recall of Overwatch to prevent him from making the trip.

This was the year he was finally going to do more than just watch, he was sure of it. It was long past time, and he was ready at last.

“I’m afraid we — the organization, I mean — is going to be experiencing a... financial issue,” Winston said. “While we have free electricity and water with the move to this base, the cost of food, medical supplies, ammunition, and the various other things we need are... um, rather significant.”

At the mention of there being a financial issue, Doctor Ziegler exited the checkers game with a firm tap to her tablet, and Genji noticed the skinny Junker looking up from his sketching, twiddling the stylus he held against the screen of his tablet as he listened intently for the first time that meeting.

“Up until now,” Winston continued, “I’ve been supporting the Recall with money from my patents, and Mister Lindholm has been remarkably generous, but we’re reaching the point where those resources will not be enough.”

Genji shifted a little uncomfortably, though he still did not lift his chin from his arms. He had not thought about where the money for the reassembled Overwatch was coming from, or even that money was being spent at all. Things had simply been too busy, and it had slipped from his mind entirely.

“We could rob a bank!” the skinny Junker offered with enthusiasm. “Me n’ Hoggie are pretty good at it.” He cackled gleefully, far too loudly for the size of the room.

The massive Junker heaved a sigh so deep that it shook his entire corpulent mass like an earthquake.

“Oh.” Winston blinked down the length of the table at the pair of Junkers. “Um...” He adjusted his glasses. “Hopefully we won’t need to do that, Junkrat.”

“No?” Junkrat slumped back in his seat. “Too bad. It’s been ages since I blew up a vault. The noise molten metal makes when it hits the floor...” he trailed off, looking rather euphoric at the memory. “Sure you’re sure, mate? Roadhog and me, we can be in-n-out nice an’ fast, and there’s your money troubles-”

The bigger Junker dropped a gigantic hand on top of the skinny one’s head, and didn’t so much ruffle the man’s hair as shake his entire skull, cutting off what had been threatening to become a stream of babble.

“Made our choices,” Roadhog rumbled, his words apparently directed at the other Junker.

“Yeah, yeah,” the skinny one responded, his posture slumping.

The gigantic Junker left his hand on the other’s head until he seemed to be satisfied that Junkrat wouldn’t be starting up again, then removed it and leaned back in his seat — making it give a distressed creak — before crossing his arms over his chest.

“Maybe we should combine our savings,” Mei offered into the resulting silence. “It’s hardly fair to have Winston and the Lindholms pay for everything.” She frowned earnestly.

“Problem is, savings’re finite,” McCree pointed out. “I’m sure all of us’ve got some to put in, but that’s only gonna put off the problem for a bit, ‘less we find a way to earn more.”

Winston and several of the others nodded in agreement with McCree.

Lúcio raised a hand and waited until Winston waved at him in acknowledgement.

“Most of the money from _Synaesthesia Auditiva_ goes to the Rio Recovery Project,” the young musician said, “but I’m still getting a cut personally for living expenses, and it’s way more than I need for being here. I can divert some of it to Overwatch’s accounts.”

“I — yes, that would be very generous of you,” Winston accepted quickly.

Genji was impressed. He knew that Lúcio’s album was a worldwide best-seller, and that a portion of the profits for it were donated to the effort to fix Rio de Janeiro after the Vishkar attempt to ‘improve’ the city by tearing at least half of it down, but he had not known that it was an actual majority of the profits that were being donated. Genji didn’t think that he would have been able to bring himself to be so generous if he had access to so much money himself.

“It’s not gonna be a massive amount,” Lúcio admitted, “but it should maybe help while we figure out what to do.”

“I’m sure it will!” Lena chirped. “That album’s been selling like mad!”

Genji watched with mild amusement as Lúcio’s cheeks went ruddy just under the line of his lightly tinted eye-lens. It was something of a delight to him that an international music star and famous revolutionary could still be so modest.

Winston nodded. “Athena, set up an appointment with Lúcio after the meeting to work out the funds transfer.”

The speaker attached to a screen displaying nothing but a single, stylized A shape sitting on the table near to the ape’s elbow responded obediently “Of course.”

“Our little musician is generous indeed!” Reinhardt boomed, and freed a hand from his knitting to clap Lúcio on the back, jolting the much smaller man nearly onto the table and knocking his lenses askew.

“Be that as it may, one man’s livin’ expenses aren’t going to be fixin’ our problem,” McCree pointed out as Lúcio righted himself and carefully resettled his headpiece over his eyes and ears.

Genji had to agree. Feeding as many people as they had — several of them being giants with matching appetites — couldn’t possibly be cheap. And that was without counting everyone’s ammunition. He wished that he could contribute as well, but his own savings had little surplus, being just enough to pay for his nutrient needs for a time and to have repairs or maintenance done for his cyborg parts. Whenever he had needed more than that or spent it down, he had simply accepted another job or two to fix the problem.

He supposed he could take on some more assassinations since they tended to pay quite well, though he suspected Winston — and maybe Tracer, Mei, and Reinhardt too — would not be happy about the source of the money. Still, he would hate to see the Recall shut down for a lack of funds, especially when it had so fortuitously gathered all of his favourite people in the world together in one place with him.

“We’ve enough of us here to hire out as a mercenary company,” McCree went on thoughtfully. “But it’d be awful hard to keep folk from puttin’ two an’ two together once they see just who our people are.”

“S’truth,” Lena agreed. “The press already went bloody spotty when it was just Win and me being seen together before.”

“So, not the best plan.” McCree adjusted his hat, still on despite his being ‘dressed down’ for the meeting in jeans and a crimson t-shirt. “S’pose we could bring in some bounties. I’ve got some identities that’re registered with some bounty brokers we could collect ‘em as.”

Genji sat up at the mention of bounties, a thought having occurred to him, triggered by Jesse’s suggestion. As the gunslinger continued talking, he quickly flicked his fingers through the air to pull up one of his personal files and sent a copy of it to Athena’s admin account in the Recall group chat.

“I have an idea,” he said, interrupting whatever Winston had been about to say in response to McCree. “Athena, would you display the file I just sent you?”

Ever obliging, Athena immediately turned the meeting room’s main screen back on and showed the file on it. It didn’t look like much, even splayed across nearly an entire wall. Mainly because it was just a simple line graph with a single unlabelled blue line on a long, flat plateau followed by a sudden sharp leap upward, then another, much smaller plateau, and another jump upward before plateauing again.

“Er, what are we looking at, Genji?” Lena asked, her brows furrowing.

“That,” Genji said, flicking his fingers at the line graph as if he was impaling it with a shuriken, “is a graph of the bounty on my brother’s head over the last two years.”

“Your brother?” Lena blinked at him earnestly. “I didn’t know you ‘ad a brother, Genji!”

“I... do not speak of him often,” Genji responded. “We... did not part on good terms.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Genji saw McCree pull his hat down over his eyes. Doctor Ziegler stared down into her massive mug of milky tea. Master Zenyatta raised a hand slightly, but then looked from Genji to the others in the room and apparently elected to remain silent as well.

“Surely you’re not suggesting that we collect on your brother’s bounty?” Winston protested.

“Not at all,” Genji responded immediately. In his peripheral vision, he saw Jesse mouth ‘and don’t call me Shirley’, the response familiar enough that Genji had not even really needed to see the cowboy’s mouth move to know it had happened as Genji continued. “I would prefer to never see that bounty collected.”

No, that death belonged to no one who would do it for the money, of that Genji was quite certain.

“Then why are you showing us this?” Mei asked.

“Because of this pattern.” Genji pointed, tracing the two sudden, sharp upward vaults in the line with a pointed finger. “My brother also abandoned the Shimada. They are the only ones who would specifically want him dead now. So this bounty must be one the Clan placed.”

McCree sat forward. “The last two years, you said? That can’t be right, if it’s your old Clan.”

“Exactly,” Genji agreed.

“Why not?” Lena asked, peering at the graph, as if the answer to the question she had just asked lay in its basic few lines.

“Takin’ down the Shimada was one o’ Blackwatch’s projects,” McCree explained. “By the time things got shut down, that Clan was pretty much on its last legs.”

“Yes, they only put the bounty on my brother when they could no longer afford to keep hiring assassins,” Genji agreed. “The first amount, it was worth much less than someone who could possibly defeat him would ask.”

“So, this sudden uptick...” Winston said thoughtfully.

“Yes, it would seem that the Shimada Clan has recently increased their fortunes.” Genji nodded. “Being able to so rise the amount of the bounty shows it.”

McCree smiled fiercely. “Well, they sure ain’t about to go usin’ that new money for any good purpose,” he said. “But I betcha we could.”

“Are... You’re suggesting we take their money?” Mei demanded in a horrified tone.

McCree levelled a hard stare at her. “I was suggestin’ that we could make for better use of that kind of money than a god-damn _yakusa_ family,” he said harshly.

“ _Yakusa_?” Mei subsided as she repeated the word, biting her lip.

“Hmm, McCree may have a point,” Winston said. “It’s quite certain that whatever this Clan does with the money they’re getting, it will not be used for anything good.” He shuffled his notes, looking somewhat conflicted. “But getting it from them... I don’t think that’s something that we’re equipped to do.”

“If a small team goes in and squeezes a Clan accountant for the passwords, we could gain access to the Shimada accounts,” Genji suggested. “And I happen to know that there is one day, every year, that the security on the main estate where the accountant with the passwords will be, is at its worst. Getting in that day will be easy. And it is very soon as well. Only a few weeks away, when the cherry blossoms are out.”

Doctor Ziegler’s hand stilled with her mug of tea only part-way to her mouth. Internally, Genji flinched, realizing that he should not have phrased it that way if he had not wanted Angela to pick up on the significance of the timing.

McCree tapped the fingers of his metal hand on the table. “Athena, do we still have a safehouse for Hanamura?” he asked.

“I have been operating the Blackwatch Hanamura safehouse as an Air B’n’B,” Athena replied. “Should I clear all reservations there for the cherry blossom viewing season?”

Genji remembered that safehouse; he had practically lived there at one point. It had been an old but comfortable house, with a high wall around the small estate. He could understand how it could have become a popular place to rent for a vacation.

“Over Children’s Day I believe, Athena,” Doctor Ziegler said, her voice crisp and cold. “Free it for a week before, and for some time after, just in case.” She threw a significant glance down the table at McCree and Genji. “I will be going along, of course.”

“Wouldn’t dream of leavin’ you behind,” McCree assured her.

“Wait, wait,” Winston broke in. “How do we still have a safehouse there?”

“Overwatch owned all Overwatch and Blackwatch safehouses, mainly through shell corporations and false identities,” Athena explained unprompted. “I am still in legal possession of ninety-six percent of the original holdings, which I have mainly been operating as rental properties and Air B’n’B locations to supplement your, Agent Oxton’s, and Lieutenant Wilhelm’s incomes.”

“Wot?” Lena asked, her confusion practically dripping from the single syllable. “I don’t... I didn’t!”

Reinhardt cleared his throat. “Overwatch was shut down in disgrace, _liebchen_ ,” he said, his booming voice strangely gentle. “Any veteran’s payments you were getting, they would not have been official.”

“Oh. Oh dear.” Lena slumped in her seat. “Don’t I feel a right fool now.”

“We seem to have drifted a mite off track,” McCree said, pulling the majority of the attention in the room away from the temporarily dejected woman next to Winston. “The plan Genji proposed has a good chance of solvin’ our money problems for a fair good while, and I say we should try that chance.”

“I don’t know...” Winston said, frowning. “We’re basing that theory on a single piece of circumstantial evidence.”

Genji started to defend his point, but a subtle hand gesture from McCree stopped him.

“Even if the payout’s not as big as we’re hopin’ for, givin’ what there is o’ the Shimada a good kickin’ ain’t no bad thing,” McCree argued. “They’re traffickers, of anything that’ll move. Drugs, arms, people, omnics. If they’ve gotten any sort of foothold back since Blackwatch stopped breathin’ down their necks — and that bounty says they have — they’re going to need dealin’ with.”

Mei sighed heavily. “He has a point, I think.”

“Yes, it would be most difficult to disagree with our cowboy’s argument!” Reinhardt agreed, brandishing a ball of bright orange yarn. “I, however, am lacking in stealth, and so I will remain behind.”

“Stealth isn’t for us either,” Roadhog suddenly contributed.

“Genji, Angie and I will probably be enough,” McCree said thoughtfully. “So long as we can get a ride in.”

“I’ll come!” Lena chirped. “I can fly us, an’ I think I make for a good lookout.”

“Thank you, Pixie, that makes things easier.” McCree smiled warmly at the pilot, who seemed to have regained her good humour, and touched the brim of his hat.

Lena beamed back at him.

“You’ll need someone who can connect Athena to the Shimada accounts.” Winston pushed up his glasses. “I’m afraid that I seem to be the only one on the team able to do that.”

“Dang,” McCree said. “When you’re right, you’re right. Guess you’ll be coming along, Big Guy?”

“It seems to be necessary,” Winston said, nodding gravely. “It does affect the stealth of the mission.”

“We’ll figure something out,” McCree said, looking a bit distant. Genji was fairly certain that the gunslinger was busily running possible ways to sneak a full-grown gorilla into Shimada Castle through his mind.

“Yes, well, I’ll leave that up to you for the time being,” Winston said with obvious relief. “In the meantime, I’ll get Athena to look into possibly finding out exactly who set that bounty, and see if she can turn up anything on the Shimada Clan finances.”

“Sounds good,” McCree agreed. “So, we have a small infiltration team. We get into the compound, get what we need, and then get out, nice and straightforward.”

“I would like to go on this mission as well,” Zenyatta said, raising a hand.

“Master, you do not need to-” Genji protested, wanting Zenyatta to be absolutely nowhere near Shimada Castle that upcoming Children’s Day. Doctor Ziegler being in easy throwing distance of him would be bad enough without his teacher’s disappointment being right there as well.

“I wish to see the place that was once my student’s home,” Zenyatta went on calmly, speaking right over Genji’s words. “And it would also be an opportunity for Miss Oxton to continue my piloting lessons.”

Genji slumped, unable to argue with Zenyatta, as usual. McCree patted him on the thigh in what was probably meant to be a comforting way, though it didn’t help.

*********

After the meeting, Genji did his best to disappear. However, short of simply sprinting away down the hall — which he did consider — there was very little he could do as the ceilings in the section of the base where the meeting room was were solid stone and most of the doors to the other rooms in the same hall were unused and thus locked. 

And so there was absolutely no reasonable escape when Angela Ziegler stalked down the hall at him, her eyes narrowed and her massive tea mug clenched tight in her hand.

“Genji,” she snapped, all but shouldering Reinhardt aside on her way to him. “A word with you.”

Caught, Genji reluctantly stopped moving to let her come up beside him. “Doctor...” he started.

“Not here, in private,” she snapped. “And you as well, Jesse.” She pointed at McCree, who had been trying to discreetly sidle away down the hall. “I wish to have these words with you as well, do not think I cannot see you trying to escape.”

“Soo~me one’s in trouble!” Junkrat singsonged gleefully.

“Shut up,” Roadhog growled at him. “Giving me a headache with your voice,” he added, dragging the other Junker away with a grip on the back of his neck.

“If it’s private, we could take this up in my office,” McCree offered, giving up his attempt to subtly escape.

“The medbay is closer,” Angela responded. “So, my office, the both of you.”

Genji supposed that it was better to face the upcoming conversation sooner rather than later, though knowing that didn’t relieve the sinking feeling it gave him to think about it. He fell in beside McCree’s soothing, warm presence and let him and Doctor Ziegler lead the way to the medbay and Angela’s personal office there.

Looking on the bright side, since the ‘conversation’ was going to be taking place quite close to Genji’s room in the medic’s quarters, perhaps he would be able to persuade Jesse to stop in there for a very personal visit after Doctor Ziegler was done with them.

In her office, Doctor Ziegler set her mug down on her desk with enough force that Genji was almost surprised that the snapping sound it made was not the desk screen cracking. Putting both hands down on the desk surface, she leaned in and glared at him.

“Genji, what the fuck?” she demanded.

“I can explain,” he hurried to assure her, glad that she had put her mug down at least, although her glare was still remarkably potent on its own.

“That was the intention of coming here, yes,” she snapped. “Why is your family’s estate unguarded on the anniversary of your... incident with your brother?”

“Actually,” he started, “it is the day after that anniversary that we will have our best opportunity to attack.”

McCree reached over and tugged lightly on the long ribbon sash that was attached to the panel covering the cable ports at the back of Genji’s head, twining the silk between his fingers.

“An’ why would that be?” he asked.

Genji squared up his stance, seeking a mental state to match it. He had never told anyone the information that he was about to reveal before, not even Master Zenyatta, who he had told a majority of his other secrets. He wished that he still had the ability to take a deep breath before plunging ahead into the answer to McCree’s question.

“My brother,” he said. “Every year on the anniversary of our battle, Hanzo attacks the Castle. He fights his way in through the guards, then performs a memorial service in the Grand Dojo.”

Doctor Ziegler’s severe expression slackened, and she dropped to sit in her cushioned desk chair. “He does what?” she asked.

“He returns to Shimada Castle every year on the same night,” Genji repeated, affirming it as much to himself as to her.

“That would explain why security would be lackin’ the day after,” McCree said thoughtfully. “But why’s he goin’ to this Grand Dojo? Your family gave you a perfectly good grave, exceptin’ that you weren’t in it.”

Genji flexed his hands restlessly, watching the mechanical joints move in a way that he could no longer feel. “The majority of our battle took place in the Grand Dojo,” he said. “I think perhaps it is there he feels is most appropriate. Our family still displays the sword he used to kill me there, and a scroll that was damaged in the fight is still hanging on the wall.”

“That’s barbaric!” Angela exclaimed in a horrified tone.

“No one could ever accuse the Shimada of being soft or gentle,” Genji reminded her. “They would have been quite proud of Hanzo for doing what he did to me, even after he left.”

Angela pursed her lips, her expression closed and unforgiving.

McCree tugged on the sash still tangled in his fingers to get Genji’s attention. “And how might you be knowing how the castle is decorated now?” the gunslinger asked.

The covers on Genji’s shoulder vents popped slightly, responding to the heat of his flush.

“I have been... I have watched him. Hanzo,” Genji explained haltingly. “A few years ago, I went to Hanamura on the anniversary.” He flicked a shuriken in and out of his fingers nervously. “It was... a thing Master Zenyatta suggested, to help in my recovery of myself from my anger.”

“Interesting,” Doctor Ziegler remarked, her expression thoughtful. “A form of confrontation therapy, I suppose?”

“Possibly, though Master Zenyatta would not refer to what he does as ‘therapy’, I think,” Genji answered. “And the results of my visit... I do not think that they are what helped me.”

“Seein’ Hanzo again by surprise on what just happened to be th’ anniversary of your fight musta been quite a shock,” Jesse commented.

“Yes, it was,” Genji agreed immediately. He flexed his hands again. “That first time, I froze,” he admitted. “I could not... I did not even know what to think.”

He had watched Hanzo through the hours that his older brother had sat in memorial before his badly damaged sword. Watched as Hanzo then packed up his supplies again and slipped away into the town just before dawn. Then Genji had fled, run and run and hadn’t stopped until he was back in the mountains of Nepal, in the room that he had claimed for himself at the Shambali monastery. He had not told anyone about having seen Hanzo.

“I went back the next year, to be certain that I did not imagine it,” he went on. “Hanzo returned as well. I have... I watch him, each year, since then. Every year it is the same.”

Genji easily caught the concerned, sidelong glance that Jesse gave him, though McCree didn’t say what he was thinking to have caused it.

Doctor Ziegler leaned back in her seat and briefly pressed a hand over her eyes. “I still do not like this plan, Genji,” she sighed. “I have never liked to see you returning to that place. But I cannot deny that the timing seems to offer us a great opportunity to attack.” She sighed deeply, and reached for her tea.

“I gotta agree with Angie,” McCree added. “Though I can say, I’m pretty impressed you’ve only watched your brother those years before now.”

Genji shrugged uncomfortably. “There is... I needed time. To think, to decide.”

“Mmm,” McCree responded, not pressing the matter further.

“That is new, you taking your time to make a decision,” Doctor Ziegler commented. “It is good, I think.”

Genji winced, but couldn’t argue against her statement. He had always been impulsive, and in hindsight he knew that he was over-inclined to jump into situations with both feet before fully assessing them. It was Zenyatta who had taught him to recognize the trait in himself.

“It is a thing I have been working on,” he explained. “With Master Zenyatta’s help.”

“He’s been good for you,” Jesse said quietly.

Doctor Ziegler nodded in agreement.

“I would still prefer if he had not insisted upon coming on this mission,” Genji said regretfully. “The treatment of omnics in Japan is... strange, compared to the rest of the world.”

“There is that,” McCree agreed. “But I see his side of decidin’.”

Doctor Ziegler nodded.

Genji just shook his head, utterly outnumbered by the people around him that actually cared about his well-being.


	2. Chapter Two

**Chapter Two**

  
Sombra stretched out, first one leg and then the other from their criss-cross position, as she sat on the lightly padded stool in front of her computer setup, wiggling her bare toes indulgently.

“You are, quite simply, far better at these things than I am,” an elegant, contralto voice that only Sombra could hear concluded. “And my own attempts have so far been fruitless.”

Sombra refolded her legs, tucking one up to rest her chin on.

“You know, _alma_ dear, I think that this is the very first time that you’ve ever asked for my help,” Sombra mused aloud. “So remarkable. Perhaps I should mark it on my calendar.”

“You are teasing me.”

Sombra tilted her head to the side at the accusation, mashing her cheek into her knee. “Not at all. But everyone else who’s wanted to be my friend has asked me to use my talents for them much sooner than you.” Usually within days, in fact. The months that had passed without even a single request since their first introduction were thus a rather interesting anomaly.

“All of them?”

“Yes, all.” Sombra raised a hand to flick through the pictures she had taken at the omnic temple in the mountains again. It was on its way to becoming a habit.

“Even Reaper?”

Sombra laughed merrily at that. “Oh no, old sourpuss didn’t want to be my friend at all, alma. It just sort of... happened for him.” She flicked her fingers, dismissing the pictures.

The response was an entirely unconvinced-sounding “Hmm.”

Sombra sighed. “Look, of course I know some of his secrets,” she admitted. “But they’re not useful. Especially since he knows that there’s no gains I can make with them. Besides, he’s better as a friend who wants to be my friend, really.”

“Perhaps so.”

“Look, I know secrets about you, too,” Sombra pointed out. “And who have I told them to, or threatened to? Nobody.” In Sombra’s opinion, the fewer people who knew those particular secrets, the better.

“That is true.” There was a smile audible in the words. Then, gently and carefully, “And what you found in Nepal?”

Sombra laughed, sharp-edged and bitter. “ _Alma_ , I won’t know who, where, when, or whether to share that until I figure out just what it is I found.” Besides horror, she did not say. Besides another childhood nightmare being real.

She shoved the thoughts aside. “But you’re distracting me. What is this thing you want my help with? Some bounty you were tracing, you said?”

“The bounty was easy,” was the answer. “There was no anonymity, they want it known that they were the ones to offer the contract. The difficulty is in determining the source of the money for the recent increases. The Shimada Clan has become more active within the same time period, but the first increase in the bounty on Hanzo Shimada occurred before the clan appears to have done anything that would have increased their capital.”

Sombra raised her eyebrows, interested. “Wait, Shimada you said?” she asked. “That sounds familiar...” She sat up a bit straighter, summoning an input keyboard to type on with a flick of her fingers. Accessing her private memory-jogging records, Sombra skimmed for ‘Shimada’. When she found it, she leaned back nearly far enough on her stool to tip off of it and laughed even as she fought to regain her balance. “Oh, _dios mio_ , them!” she choked out past her mirth.

“Sombra, are you alright?”

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Sombra assured, wiping away a tear that had welled up. “But yeah, that money, it’s us.”

“Us?”

“Talon,” Sombra clarified. “We started backing the Shimada, and the first thing they did was raise the bounty with the money.”

“But why would Talon start backing the Shimada Clan so suddenly?”

Sombra prodded the memory-file idly. “Seems our resident maddest doctor heard something about some sort of legendary super-human powers they’re supposed to have, and went nuts about getting personal access to them.”

“Oh. Well, that makes sense.”

Sombra cast a thoughtful, sidelong look at the app window for the call, tucked away off to the side of her screen setup, halfway under an opened file of surveillance videos running at 10x speed. “You know something about that and you’re not telling me.”

“Am I?”

“I will find a way to get it out of you,” Sombra promised. “But anyway, I hadn’t gotten to the funny part!”

“The funny part?”

“Oh yeah,” Sombra gloated. “So, the doctor gets her access to the clan for the low, low price of Talon getting yet more possibly useful underworld contacts, and she finds out that this thing she was looking for was... what was the word she used... reclusive? Or was it recessive? Well, one of those, and the only one in the whole family who had it was the guy who had up and run away from them years ago. She was so mad. I mean, apparently they’ve been trying to breed up another one or something, but no luck.”

“I am not sure how this is supposed to be funny.”

“The funny part is still coming,” Sombra promised. “So, O’Deorain gets a hair in her ass about the whole thing, and has Talon actually hunt the guy down. And then, get this, they specially thaw Widowmaker out and have her go and personally invite him to join Talon, assassin to assassin.” She paused in the story to laugh again. “And he totally turns her down! She comes back all ‘he said non’ in that deadpan way she does and he just cannot be found to talk to anymore since then. Folded up the bank account I’d found and pffft, gone!

“The doctor just lost it. Rounded up a few hundred thousand of her own money and gave it to the clan specifically for them to add to his bounty, just because she was so upset about it.”

“That goes some way to explaining the second, later rise in the total bounty being offered.”

“That it does,” Sombra realized. “I think that makes it even funnier,” she decided aloud.

“I suppose it does. It is interesting as well, to know that Hanzo Shimada refused an invitation to join Talon.”

“Yeah, you wouldn’t think a trained yakusa assassin would have a problem with Talon’s way of doing things,” Sombra agreed. “Maybe he figured he’d have a better profit solo? We do have the spider-lady after all, he could have been spending a lot of time doing nothing. Not that he was being invited for his skills, but he couldn’t have known he was meant to be one of the doctor’s experiments when he was asked.”

“True.”

“Why the sudden interest in all things Shimada, anyway?” Sombra asked curiously.

There was a slight pause before the answer came. “The general thought here is that we could make much better use of a substantial amount of money than a _yakusa_ clan.”

“Oh-ho, I like this idea.” Sombra grinned sharply, and closed her memory files. “Tell you what, sweet, your lot get access to those accounts and I’ll not only make sure you keep it, I’ll arrange it so that Talon’s support never dries up.” It would be easy. O’Deorain had lost interest when she couldn’t get her claws into whatever special genetic thing the Shimada had, and no one in Talon was paying attention anymore. The payments to the Shimada had already slipped into maintenance mode without remark. All Sombra would really have to do was redirect any complaints the _yakusa_ tried to make about no longer getting money into the ether. It wouldn’t even take doing more than setting up a basic subroutine.

“That sounds like a deal with very few down-sides for us. I will take it.”

“Good choice,” Sombra purred.

*********

  
“Master, I wish you would reconsider your decision to come with us to Hanamura,” Genji said to Zenyatta at their last meditation session before the team was due to leave for Japan.

Zenyatta cocked his head slightly. “Is there something wrong in my wishing to see the place that was your home?”

“No, Master.” Genji shook his head. “It’s just that...” That he would prefer to have gone back to Japan alone, that Zenyatta would most likely be so terribly disappointed with what Genji planned to do, that he didn’t want the presence of his teacher to stop him from what he intended to do.

“Just what, my student?”

Genji flexed his hands. “Even with my brother and I gone, the Shimada are very dangerous, Master, and they still control Hanamura,” he tried. “And the way that omnics are treated in Japan — I would not like to see you treated that way.”

“I was not aware that omnics are so mistreated there that you would fear for my safety,” Zenyatta responded.

Genji unsuccessfully fought the urge to squirm. He had very much been hoping to avoid this strange, awkward conversation. “It’s... that’s not exactly it,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “In Japan, omnics are considered to be almost like people, but are also, well, things. Foreign things. Even when they were made there.”

“I fear that I do not understand, my student.” Zenyatta danced one of the large sutra balls that floated around his neck across his fingertips as he waited for a better explanation.

Genji did his best approximation of a frustrated hiss, a brief splutter of strange, sibilant static.

“It’s hard to put into words,” he said after a moment of thought, “but foreign things or people, they are not... thought well of there. Especially ones perceived to be without employment.” Genji shifted again uncomfortably. “There are many who think of omnics as people, and count them among their friends, but an omnic that appears to have no job or purpose... It’s like they are considered broken or to be malfunctioning.”

“Ah.” Zenyatta said thoughtfully. “I believe I begin to see.” The sutra ball in his fingertips chimed faintly. “It would pain you if I were to be treated in such a way.”

“Of course it would!” Genji protested.

The sutra ball spun, chiming musically on the tip of Zenyatta’s thumb. “What is it, I wonder,” he said evenly, “that makes your former family home so ripe to be attacked on one particular day each spring?”

Genji flinched. “I don’t... Master, it’s not what-” he broke himself off, not sure what to say.

The sutra ball made a soft noise as it spun off the tip of Zenyatta’s middle finger to rejoin the others floating around the monk’s neck. “I do not need to hear the reason to know that it is why I should go with you to Hanamura,” he said serenely. “Do not trouble yourself, my student. These meditation sessions are to cultivate your peace of mind, after all.”

Recognizing the topic as having been definitively closed with himself on the losing side of the argument, Genji took the not so subtle hint and reluctantly dropped the conversation.

*********

  
Hanzo pulled over his motorbike at a bend in the mountain road that he was driving on, and set the engine to idle before getting off to stretch. He had been driving all day, and hadn’t seen another vehicle for hours, turning the climbing serpentine roads into a hypnotizing expanse as they passed under his bike. He needed a break, before it led him into a mistake.

Leaning into one of the large pannier bags on the back of his scuffed-up, second-hand bike, Hanzo retrieved a bottle of tea, though not without letting his hand linger on a flask of _sochu_ for much longer than was needed to shift it out of the way.

He was fairly high in the mountains by then, so the view off the edge of the curve over a small valley that he had parked in was spectacular. Leaving his bike parked in the median, Hanzo climbed up to sit, gargoyle-like, on a post of the guard rail facing out into the vista spread before him in the cold sunlight and began to slowly drink his tea.

It would be spring soon in Hanamura. Soon, very soon, it would be time to leave the mainland and turn his path back toward Japan again. Hanzo both looked forward to it and dreaded having to return.

Although he had chosen to make returning to Hanamura and Shimada Castle every May his penance and his duty, every year it felt like he was forcing himself to go. But to not go, to allow the memory of Genji, of what Hanzo had done, to languish unmarked and unmemorialized — the mere thought was anathema, disgusting. If he failed to return, he would be no better than the Clan elders, who had gone in the space of less than a breath from assuring Hanzo that he had done the right thing in killing his brother to the selection of his bride. His head had felt so light in that meeting, the ragged strands of what was left of his hair only barely brushing the back of his neck.

Just the memory caused a fresh wave of his ever-present self hatred.

Hot on the heels of that memory, Hanzo remembered his mother. In the last year of her life, his lessons with her had begun with a meeting she had requested, unexpectedly, to have with him.

“ _Poison,_ ” she had begun without preamble when he had arrived, “ _is not a fair tool. Nor is it such a swift or clean death like a blade or a broken neck offers. But it is my family’s way, and as I have no other to teach — and nor will I ever — your Father has at last consented that I teach it to you. You must be certain to learn well, my son. There is not so much time any more._ ”

And so, Hanzo had learned. He spent the last months of her life, as she visibly sickened and faded, by her side memorizing the ways to make men die by using the apothecary’s arts.

Near the end, when her hands shook, nearly too weak to lift her own teacup, she stopped in the middle of giving a lesson, staring out of the open shogi into the garden.

“ _Mother?_ ” he asked when the silence grew too long.

“ _All poison is either bitter or sweet,_ ” she said. “ _Sweet poison is easy to hide in many things, but bitter is nearly impossible to entirely conceal._ ” She turned away from the garden to look at him. “ _Regret is the most bitter poison of all, my son. The taste of it will cling to the back of your throat and strangle you until you die._ ”

“ _Mother, I don’t-_ ”

“ _There is no more strength in me left to teach you. Your lessons with me are over. Go._ ”

He had risen to obey her. Just as he was about to open the door to go, she called to him.

“ _Hanzo._ ”

He turned to look back at her.

“ _Look after your brother._ ”

Struck wordless by the strangeness of her sudden topics of conversation, he had merely bowed and muttered an agreement before leaving the room.

It had been the last conversation he had ever had alone with her before she died.

It was not until many years later that he had come to wonder if she had meant to warn him on that last day, or if she had meant to confess.

Hanzo finished his bottle of tea, and turned his gaze from the mountain vista before him that he wished he had the talent to paint to the steep, scree-covered near cliff that dropped away just past the barrier he sat on and the boulders strewn at the bottom below. It was a very large drop. He let go of the empty tea bottle, and watched as it rolled and bounced down the slope, faster and faster, even its slight weight dislodging the scree to tumble down with it until it shattered on the rocks below. The scree took much longer to settle, hissing and clattering down the slope, setting off secondary and tertiary slides as it went.

He pressed a hand over his eyes as the noise and movement below finally settled, feeling the metal balls on his bridge piercing press into his fingers as he did. Solid. Real.

Hanzo dropped his hand from his face and stood on the top of the massive post that he had been seated on, staring down at the drop below him for long, silent minutes. Then, without shifting his gaze in the slightest, he took a single, resolute step backward, landing solidly on both feet in the gravel of the curve in the road’s wide verge. Turning away from the guard rail, Hanzo returned to his bike, swung into the seat, and put his helmet back on before starting up the motor again.

It was time to turn back and return to Hanamura.

*********

  
“This just seems entirely too simple to actually work,” Winston said uneasily, looking at the tarp that Angela, Lena, and Zenyatta had gotten out of one of the holding bins of the plane.

“That’s why it’s going to work!” Lena informed him cheerfully. “Take it from me, there’s no one what looks twice once they see a delivery logo like we put on the plane before coming.”

Given that she had supplemented her income in the years since the Overwatch shutdown by being a — if not the — fastest delivery service in Europe, it was impossible to disbelieve her assertion. Still, Winston found himself to be somewhat dubious of the proposed idea represented by the canvas being held out before him.

“Um,” he pushed up his glasses, “but won’t someone notice that the tarp is, well, walking?”

“Not if it is not,” Zenyatta said serenely, nudging the large cart that had been loaded with everyone’s equipment and luggage.

“Oh.” Winston peered at the cart. “Oh dear.”

Angela shook her head. “Frankly, Winston,” she sighed. “Keeping you from being noticed is the simplest out of this team.”

“Castin’ aspersions on my fashion, Angie?” McCree asked, poking his head in the open access door at the side of the plane’s cargo bay.

“Not just yours,” Angela assured him. “All of us are far too noticeable here, each in our own way.”

“Can’t argue with that,” McCree agreed. “Speakin’ of, Genji’s just pullin’ the van we got around for loadin’,” he added.

“I’ll put the ramp down so he knows where not to park,” Lena said and blinked over to the rear ramp controls to do just that.

“Did you have any trouble getting the truck you wanted?” Angela asked McCree, who still had not come all the way into the plane.

McCree shrugged. “Didn’t neither of us have the right kind of licence, it turns out. So we got the biggest van we could instead.”

“I was not aware that Genji had a driving license,” Zenyatta remarked.

McCree looked over at the monk. “Boss made him get an international one, back in the day,” the cowboy said carefully. “Seems he found it useful t’keep it up to date since then.”

“It was rather a nightmare getting it, I remember,” Angela said in a fond tone that didn’t entirely match the content of her words. “He was still adjusting to his cybernetics then, and it made his driving quite erratic.”

The cargo ramp touched down on the ground, and Lena blinked back to them.

“I remember that!” she laughed. “The only place he was allowed to practise was on secure Overwatch property and he needed the space of an unused airstrip, so he was at the Slipstream facility screaming a blue streak in Japanese at least three times a week!” She giggled. “We used’t set up in the control tower with beers an’ binocs to watch. Though I didn’t know him as Genji then,” she added, “he was just a stranger then.”

“Please stop talking about me,” Genji said, coming up the ramp. “It makes my nose tingle, and sneezing is very complicated.”

Winston didn’t understand, however he decided to leave it alone.

“Sorry darlin’,” McCree called. “Got a little caught up in reminiscin’.”

Genji rolled his shoulders in an almost-shrug, burying his hands in the front pocket of the over-sized hoodie he was wearing.

“We arranged a hangar to park the plane in while we’re here, too,” McCree added. “So once we’ve moved everything there’s a spot waitin’ in C-5, Pixie.”

“Gotcha!” Lena agreed.

Angela took the handle of the cart and headed for the ramp, waving for Zenyatta to go with her. “We will pack this in the van, and then come back for you, Winston,” she called.

Winston sighed heavily, looking at the tarp. It seemed that there really was no better way.

Lena blinked up beside him and leaned the entirety of her slight weight against him, looping her arm up across the back of his shoulder comfortingly.

“Won’t be for more’n a tick, Win,” she said, her tone reassuring. He patted her delicately in thanks for her understanding.

She stayed there, a warm, quiet presence against his side, until the luggage and equipment had all been unloaded into the van and Angela pushed the empty cart up the ramp and back into the plane.

With care to keep from falling or doing anything more embarrassing than what he was already committed to, Winston climbed onto the cart as Angela helpfully held it steady.

“This is humiliating,” he muttered unhappily as McCree and Lena, with some assistance from Zenyatta, started to lift the tarp over him.

“Good news is, it’ll only be for gettin’ to and from the plane,” McCree commented reassuringly. “Both the safehouse and the castle ‘ve got nice, high walls.”

“Forgive me if that isn’t very comforting at the moment,” Winston grumbled, muffled by the tarp as it was draped over him completely and someone — probably Lena by the humming electronic sound of it through the thick fabric — started fussily tucking it in around him.

“Fair,” McCree agreed, apparently having understood his words anyway.

Once the tarp was tucked up to Lena’s satisfaction, Angela cleared her throat loudly and said “The cart will start moving now,” before she suited action to words.

Going down the ramp was the terrible part, Winston decided as the cart lurched into an angle that felt all the steeper for his not being able to see it. He gritted his teeth and braced himself as best he could with spread hands and feet on the floor of the cart, regretting the tarp having been tucked up in a way that prevented him from curling his fingers and toes over the edges for a better grip. Thankfully, it didn’t take long to reach the bottom and level off.

Belatedly, Winston wondered how he was supposed to get from the cart into the back of the van. It was definitely something that he should have thought to ask beforehand.

“Um,” he said, hoping that there weren’t any airport employees nearby.

“Genji, help me get the cart on the lift,” Angela said. “I can’t see the edge.”

Even though the cart shook and wobbled getting it on the unseen lift, Winston felt a distinct sense of relief. He had no idea how they would have gotten him into the van while still keeping him hidden otherwise. Walking was out of the question, and there was no way that Lena, McCree, Angela, and Zenyatta could have managed to lift him. Though he did have to admit that he still didn’t know what the lift capacity was on whatever kept the omnic monk floating in the air so quietly and steadily all the time. Winston had dearly wanted to ask ever since he had first met Zenyatta and the handful of other floating monks at the Shambali Monastery, but he had yet to come up with a sufficiently polite way to do so. He had made the acquaintance of so few omnics; he couldn’t be sure what they considered polite or impolite to bring up regarding their capabilities or manufacture and he didn’t want to misstep.

The lift rose with a gentle smoothness. When it stopped, someone nudged the cart just enough to give it a little shake.

“Keep your head down, Win,” Lena hissed from surprisingly close by. “I’ll nudge you in, then you can get off.”

Heeding the warning, Winston hunched down as much as he could, not wanting to have his head hit the roof of the van as Lena carefully pushed the cart a little way into the trunk compartment.

“’Ere you are,” Lena whispered to him again in a moment. “Should be just enough room for you. Just scoot off carefully, alright?”

Her care and concern gave him a warm feeling, just as it always did, as he shuffled himself off of the cart, feeling his way into the space left for him. As Lena had said, there seemed to be just enough left for him, though he felt solid things on all three sides.

There aren’t any windows in the back bit, so you can take the tarp off once we get the doors closed,” Lena whisper-shouted once he was mostly off the cart. “Are you-” She jiggled the cart and Winston, who still had a foot on it lurched with a wordless noise of surprise. “Oops, you aren’t. Sorry.”

Winston got himself the rest of the way off of the cart much faster than he had been moving before, and nudged it back the way that it had come to indicate that he wasn’t on it anymore. As it was pulled away, presumably by Lena he supposed, he made sure to hold onto the tarp so that it wouldn’t be pulled off of him prematurely.

“I am here,” Angela suddenly said from the opposite side of him from where the cart was retreating, surprising him again. “It will still be a little time. The lift has to be stowed before the doors can be closed.”

Winston was very thankful that he wasn’t being abandoned on his own while he still had the tarp over his head. He was quite touched at how considerate his teammates were being about putting him through the whole ordeal.

The van vibrated subtly as the lift moved, then rocked through a few dull thumps.

The door is closed now,” Angela said cheerfully.

Winston immediately set about dragging the tarp from over his head. Once he was free of the enveloping fabric, he saw that the van McCree and Genji had gotten was actually of a more substantial size than he had expected from the term, with room for a bench seat — which Angela was sitting on — as well as enough ‘trunk’ space for all of their equipment and luggage as well as a full-grown gorilla.

“Oh, this is much better than I had expected,” he commented.

“Yes, this would not have been very comfortable if we had decided to use the van from the base,” Angela agreed.

Winston had to agree. The van at the base only had two seats, one for the driver and one for a passenger, and was much smaller, which meant that the back would have been extremely cramped and rather unsafe with all of them and their gear crammed into it.

The front passenger door of the van opened, and McCree slid into the seat. “Pixie and the Monk are parkin’ the plane,” he told them as Genji got into the driver’s seat.

“Is the safehouse far from here?” Winston asked.

“About an hour-some drive, assumin’ the roads haven’t changed too much,” McCree answered after thinking for a moment.

“The roads around Hanamura have not changed in over two hundred years,” Genji commented, his tone dry. “They will not have done so in a mere decade or two.”

“You’d be the expert,” McCree agreed.

“I would have thought the safehouse would be closer to the airport,” Winston commented. “An hour’s drive away seems very far to go when one is trying to go unnoticed.”

“We must go so far in order to be unnoticed,” Genji said. “The airport is within Hanamura, and Hanamura belongs to the Shimada. The safehouse is in a town outside of their influence.”

“Quiet little place,” McCree added. “The population’s mainly retirees who prefer the country to the city an’ vacationers. And just enough foreign sightseers that no one looked sideways at the Blackwatch teams.”

“Oh, I see,” Winston said, pushing up his glasses. “Though I must admit, I am surprised Commander Reyes would have passed without notice,” he added, remembering the large, looming man who had always moved like a predator.

Angela laughed. “No, they were terrified of him,” she explained. “He had to hide himself away behind the walls just like you will have to.”

“I would not be surprised if there are still stories of a great dark monster living in that house that can almost disguise itself as a man,” Genji said in a thoughtful tone. “Perhaps we could use that.”

“Sure would keep most folk from pryin’,” McCree agreed. “Assumin’ the population of kids and teenagers hasn’t gone up since we were last there.”

“Unless a school has been built there, I doubt it will be an issue,” Angela said. “Any younger people will be away.”

“It is graduation season, so they would be away, yes,” Genji agreed. “They may come home for Children’s Day, but that is a time for family, not for bravery challenges.”

“Good, good,” McCree said. “That’ll work.”

Winston fussed with the tarp, untangling it from around him, feeling almost extraneous in a way that he didn’t remember ever having experienced before. The way that Genji, McCree, and Angela were plotting so easily and smoothly together left no room for any contributions that he could have tried to make. Not that he knew of anything he could have added, given that the conversation was entirely dependant on knowledge from Blackwatch that he wasn’t privy to. He hadn’t even been aware that the unit had their own safehouses until the meeting that Genji had proposed their mission.

The side door of the van was suddenly hurled open without warning.

“Zenyatta is so slooooow!” Lena complained, leaning in through the opening.

Out of the corner of his eye, Winston saw Angela tuck her pistol away again, and realized that he didn’t remember seeing her draw it.

“I move at precisely the speed that I am meant to,” Zenyatta’s voice came from a distance away. “It is you who moves swiftly.”

Lena made her impatience face, as Winston had come to think of the expression.

“Hurry up!” she urged over her shoulder. “You need to sit in the middle!”

“Where I must sit will not change my speed.”

“It really won’t,” Genji affirmed, his tone full of what sounded very much like repressed laughter. “He will arrive when he gets here, and no sooner.”

Lena stuck out her tongue at the cyborg.

“Since when did you grow some patience?” she demanded.

“I have always been patient,” Genji lied serenely, making Angela and McCree laugh.

“He’ll be here very soon, Lena,” Winston soothed.

“Correction. He is here,” Zenyatta said, coming up beside Lena.

McCree used a showy spin to close up the butterfly knife he was holding, which was the first time Winston noticed it. Then the folded-up knife vanished as the cowboy spoke.

“Get on in, then, afore Pixie starts levitatin’ herself in agitation.”

“Indeed, that is my purview.” With only the faintest increase in his constant nearly sub-sonic hum, Zenyatta hovered up to the level of the backseat of the van.

Winston watched, knowing that he might very willingly give his eye-teeth to know what method of propulsion the omnic monk actually used to do that as Zenyatta serenely drifted along the length of the seat to the middle, then settled as gently as a falling leaf, unfolding his legs as his rear met the cushion, leaving him in a perfectly normal human seated position. Lena immediately flung herself into the single remaining seat and closed the van’s side door.

“Do up your seatbelt, Master,” Genji said as he turned to face front, reaching for the ignition.

McCree rolled his shoulders before reaching for his own seatbelt. “Let’s get this show on the road,” he drawled. “Window seats are on tail watch.”

It was only as the words left the gunslinger’s mouth that Winston realized why it had been so important that Zenyatta take the middle seat. He felt ashamed for having overlooked the now obvious need for lookouts on their drive, and resolved not to do it a second time when or if the situation arose again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here’s a small easter egg as a reward for finishing the chapter: All of the current members of the Recall except one have spoken at least two lines by this point.


	3. Chapter Three

**Chapter Three**

  
It was pleasantly, perfectly warm as Genji lounged at ease, cradled against Jesse’s broad, bare chest as his gunslinger swept long, luxurious caresses down the length of his body. Incredibly comfortable and basking in heat, he could have very easily fallen asleep then and there despite the low power warning hovering in the corner of one of his eyes.

“It’s been nearly four days, darlin’,” McCree drawled affectionately. “Think you’re ever going to sleep in your own room?”

Genji slitted open an eye to look at him. “Do you want me to?” he asked.

“Aw, naw,” Jesse answered, teasing his metal fingers along Genji’s ribs. “Jus’ thought that you might want to move your induction pad in here. That way, you’d not have to leave to charge.”

A bright liquid rush of affection ran through Genji at the offer, and he flipped over so that he could prop himself up on his elbows to look Jesse in the face. “You mean that?”

McCree gave him a soft look. “Wouldn’t have offered if I didn’t, sugar.” Then he turned his attention back to the nearly a metre’s worth of faintly glowing green dragon sprawled across his chest, running his fingers carefully along the base of Genji’s mane. “You could do the same back at base,” he said, his tone just a little too casual. “S’not like you need twenty-four medical watch anymore these days, and my room’s as close as one gets to a double without movin’ into the Commander’s.”

Genji scrambled up to a kneel at McCree’s side, leaning into the other man’s space. “Jesse McCree, are you asking me to move in with you?” he asked through sparkling happiness.

Jesse graced him with a wide, crooked smile. “Yeah, pretty sure I am.” He leaned up to press a smacking kiss onto Genji’s face-plate, approximately where his mouth should be beneath it. “So, will you?”

“Of course I will.” Fierce, brilliant joy roared through Genji, and unable to otherwise express it, he rolled over onto his back on Jesse’s chest, nosing up under the cowboy’s chin affectionately, exposing his tender belly to the other man completely.

McCree yipped and bolted upright, sending Genji tumbling into his lap. “Watch those spines, darlin’, I ain’t got a shirt!”

Genji untangled himself from the unexpected tumble, and floated up into the air before reaching over with his other body to run his metal fingers along the small, nearly hidden spines that ran along his back, camouflaged in his golden mane. He couldn’t help making a disgruntled noise at having lost his oh so comfortable and warm resting place.

“Sorry to toss ya like that,” McCree apologized, with a gentle caress along his jaw that teased his beard. “I just... those stickers of yours...”

Being a green and gold dragon of earth, it was true that Genji’s poison was quite potent. And McCree had certainly seen people die from only minor punctures from the venomous spines along his back in the past, from the rare times when someone had been foolish or stupid enough to make a grab for his dragon self when he was more solid — as he was at that moment. So Jesse’s reaction did make sense, as unnecessary as it was, and Genji couldn’t hold it against him.

“My dragon is myself,” Genji tried to explain, the words awkward in his third language in a way they never were in his first. “It is an extension, a projection of my soul. It could never hurt anyone I care for.”

To illustrate his point, he snapped at Jesse’s petting fingers, his sharp fangs passing harmlessly through the cowboy’s flesh without even leaving a mark before he could pull away.

“Huh. Ain’t that a thing,” McCree said, studying his untouched fingers. He slanted a glance at Genji. “Seems I remember you snappin’ at me not to touch if I din’t want to die, back in the day.”

Genji dropped his gaze to this thighs, rubbing his hands along them just to feel the touch on some of the only intact skin he still had. “I was so angry then,” he said, picking his words with care. “And full of hate. I even hated Doctor Ziegler, Lena, and Winston some days.” He looked up at Jesse, who was distractingly fingering Genji’s mane as he listened. “It would not have been safe then. Not like it is now.”

McCree suddenly reached over, wrapping his arms around Genji and pulling both of the ninja bodily into his lap. “Sweetpea, if that ain’t the most lovin’ thing you’ve ever said t’me,” he declared thickly, pulling Genji against his hairy chest tightly.

“Jesse!” Genji squirmed, trying to get into a less awkward position than a tangled sprawl, but it only resulted in Jesse hitching him up higher so that he could get his hot mouth and tickling beard onto the sensitive line just below where his left pectoral met the anchor plate for his shoulder vents. Genji made an odd spluttering sound that would have been a gasp if he had still been able to gasp.

Jesse mumbled something into the muscle of Genji’s pectoral that sounded like “Love when ya make tha’ noise, darlin’.”

Jesse, that’s not fair.” McCree ignored him, busily mapping the patch of remaining skin on Genji’s chest with his mouth. “Not when I can’t return the favour,” Genji protested, finally managing to squirm out from being pressed a bit too tightly between them. When that still failed to stop the other man, Genji laced his fingers through Jesse’s hair and tugged, earning himself a nip in retaliation. “Jesse, I need to recharge before we can go again,” he reminded his cowboy. “Unless you are turned on by a sudden impression of a dead fish part-way through, you need to stop.”

McCree paused, then blew a disgustingly wet-sounding raspberry on Genji’s chest before collapsing backward, pulling the cyborg down with him.

Genji shuffled, making himself comfortable, hopefully without cutting off any of McCree’s circulation. “I need to charge before tonight, anyway,” he mused aloud, curling his other body comfortably on the pillow, just barely above the cowboy’s head.

“Plannin’ on wakin’ up early ready to go for the mission tomorrow?” McCree asked. “Or plannin’ for, as you say, ‘another go’?” His tone was lascivious, but Genji detected an undertone of something else that sounded more like worry.

“Neither,” Genji admitted. “My brother will be at the Castle tonight.”

McCree’s hand stilled where he had been idly ruffling Genji’s hair, and he propped himself up a little to better look into Genji’s face without dislodging the ninja from his chest. “What’re you thinkin’ there?” he asked quietly, his tone very slightly more thoughtful than concerned.

Genji shifted so that he could look back at Jesse without getting a crick in his neck. “I plan-” he started, then stopped to gather his thoughts before starting again. Jesse waited patiently as he did. “I will confront him this year.” He paused and looked McCree directly in the eye. “I want you to come with me.”

McCree returned his intense stare steadily. “You know I’ve got your back, darlin’,” he said. “Though I wouldn’t have thought you’d’ve wanted me there.”

Genji turned his gaze away. It was a complicated thing. He wanted to go alone, it was true, just him and Hanzo finally face to face with each other in combat, on even ground at last. But — the terrible but — Hanzo had bested him before. It was possible that he could again, if Genji was still more conflicted than he thought he was. Backup was insurance. And then there was the other thing.

“I would rather that you not come in with me,” Genji agreed. “But I want you there. Nearby.” He ran his fingers through Jesse’s chest hair. “Just in case,” he explained. “And because you hide me.”

McCree hummed deep in his chest. “You’ve mentioned somethin’ like that afore,” he mused, “but you’ve never explained it.”

“Have I not?” Genji asked, genuinely surprised. Quickly, he thought back, trying to remember if it had ever come up before, back in the original Blackwatch days, and drew a blank. “I suppose I did not,” he said, answering his own question.

“T’be honest, at first I thought it was a knock at my bein’ so much bigger’n you,” McCree admitted. “Like you were literally hidin’ behind me from folk.”

Genji huffed a laugh, and kneaded Jesse’s hair with his claws even as he turned his face into the other man’s chest. “While that may be the case physically, that was not what I ever meant.” He paused, remembering how acidic he had been back in those days. “I am fairly certain,” he amended.

“I got that,” Jesse assured him, his tone amused. “So, what did you mean then, sugarplum?”

“Never call me that again. I do not like that one.”

“Fair ‘nough,” Jesse agreed easily.

“As for your question...” Genji trailed off thoughtfully. “Give me a moment to think how to say this in English.”

“Still a few hours to nightfall,” Jesse said. “Take your time.”

Genji continued running his fingers through McCree’s chest hair as he worked out how to explain. Finally, tentatively, he began, thinking out each sentence before he said it. “To people who are able to sense spirits, my family is noticeable,” he started. “Especially those of us whose dragon has awakened, like myself and my brother. But you,” he snuffed affectionately against McCree’s ear, “you are... very loud, across a very large area. It is...” he trailed off searching for a simile. “It is like static, white noise that covers me.”

“If’fn it were anyone other’n you callin’ me ‘large and loud’, I’m thinkin’ I’d take exception to that,” McCree commented.

Embarrassed, Genji’s shoulder vents popped with the heat from his blush. “I- That is not how I- I did not mean to insult you,” he hurried to apologize.

McCree dug his fingers into Genji’s hair and tugged lightly. “I know you didn’t,” he assured him. “That’s why I said ‘anyone but you’, there.”

“Still, I did not think, and for that I apologize,” Genji insisted even as he leaned into the pleasant sensation of Jesse’s fingers against his scalp, deadened as the feeling there was from the lost nerve endings from his repeated brain surgeries.

“If it makes you feel better,” McCree said, “it’s already forgot.” He shifted, causing Genji to slide from his perch just above the cowboy’s head down to his shoulder in a tangle that slapped the tuft of his tail across McCree’s ear. “Oops, sorry there,” he said, reaching up a hand quickly to brush the feathery hair out of his ear and to offer some support for Genji to settle in the new spot. “I’d never’d expected to have my soul described as ‘loud’,” he mused, somewhat absently.

“It is not exactly,” Genji commented, adjusting both of himself into comfortable positions. “I mean, it is very noticeable when I am paying direct attention, but if I am not... it is simply there.” He nosed at McCree’s hand, letting him know that he didn’t need it for support anymore. “It is hard to explain,” he complained. “It does not draw attention, that is why it is so easy to hide in it.”

“Huh.” Jesse’s free hand made it’s way down to Genji’s ass, which he squeezed. “Aren’t I going to have to keep pretty close t’keep your brother from tellin’ you’re comin’, then?” he asked.

Genji shook his head. “Hanzo is... not terribly sensitive,” he explained. “Because two dragons awakened in him...” He paused, searching for a way to describe it, and remembered a way that Hanzo himself had once described it. “It is like he is listening for the song of a bird while he is surrounded by rushing water.”

“That’s right poetic,” McCree complimented, squeezing his butt again.

Genji didn’t answer the compliment, not wanting to admit that only the translation had been his, not the simile. Instead, he rubbed his cheek against McCree’s, deliberately tickling him with the long fronds of his whiskers.

“So you will come with me tonight?” he asked hopefully after long moments had passed in comfortable silence.

“Yeah, of course I will,” Jesse assured him, sounding a little sleepy. “Best you hop to get your charging pad, I guess. Then there’s still enough time for a nap ‘fore headin’ out, I reckon.”

“I like this plan,” Genji said. “All of it except having to move.”

Jesse laughed, warm and rumbling under Genji where he was sprawled against his chest.

*********

  
Hanzo took his time doing his hair; carefully scraping and smoothing every strand that was long enough up into the short spike of his ponytail. There was nothing to be done about the fans of grey sprouting from his temples — since he had decided to grow out his under-cut he had discovered that his silver hair both grew at a slower pace and was coarser in texture than the black, and he had learned not to fuss at it too much least it start to look as if he was an American cartoon character who had just been electrocuted.

He had plenty of time to get ready, having chosen, boldly, to stay in a capsule hotel within the main town of Hanamura that year. It was a risk, certainly, but a calculated one. The Clan, despite knowing both the day and the time of his coming year after year had always failed to pick him out when he surveyed the Castle ahead of time, and the capsule hotel had three advantages: one, it was far too cheap for the former Shimada Head to be expected to stay there, two, the simple locking program on the capsules was easily fooled into recording that there was an occupant inside when there was not, and three, there were no cameras in the single stairwell in the building with roof access. Thus it was as close to ideal for his purposes as reality was capable of.

Once he was content with his hair, Hanzo carefully removed his piercings from his face and ears and replaced them with flesh-coloured plugs. He would have to be more careful now that he had completed that step of getting ready: he had become the most recognizable as Hanzo Shimada that he could be before changing into the traditional clothes that fully bared both his cybernetics and his dragon-mark that he always wore to his penance. The final step of his preparation in the hotel was to sweep a thick line of eyeliner onto each of his lids, his hand gratifyingly steady as he did.

His hair, makeup, and piercings taken care of, Hanzo scooped up the dark sports bag resting at his feet and cautiously left the capsule hotel’s dressing room as he slung the bag over his shoulder. The hallway was clear, and he slipped into the stairwell without being noticed.

Once on the roof, he put the bag down again and methodically started doing his stretches. On previous evenings he had done his full exercise routine when he came up to the roof, however, since he would be fighting that night only stretching would be needed. The roof was gritty, but it was also private and of an adequate size, so that he could stay in the center as he worked out and not risk being seen from the street. Not that many people looked up in Hanamura, even now, but some might.

He took his time stretching, letting the shadows of evening lengthen and darken into night as he loosened his limbs and body. It would not do to move too soon. Once true dark had fallen, he brushed aside the one lock of hair that had escaped his rigorous styling and fallen into his face as it always somehow managed to do, picked up his bag again and set out across the rooftops.

Hanamura was an old city, and Shimada Castle lay in the very oldest part of it. The roads there were narrow and winding, so Hanzo could easily make his way there without ever having to touch the ground along the way.

He stopped again on another roof almost a block away from the arcade that was just down the street from the temple yard entrance to the Shimada grounds, the way in that he had decided to use to enter the Castle that year. The roof he stood on had a high parapet, perfect for his purposes.

Hanzo dropped his bag at his feet and began stripping. The roofs in Hanamura may have belonged to the Shimada still, but the Clan had been so greatly reduced that this rooftop, where no one had seen him arrive to and no one would see him leave from was a spot of perfect privacy to change into his _kyudo-gi_ and _hakama_ as well as the most ideal place to store his street clothes until he was done at the Castle.

*********

  
Genji’s artificial voice-box was much more human-sounding than the average omnic, but it was still incapable of singing. Still, he made do as much as he could with a tonal sort of chanting of a childhood marching song that also happened to be sung by drunks from time to time as he dropped from a roof onto the street behind McCree.

Jesse glanced over at the cyborg as he came up alongside him, dropping his hand from the butt of his gun as he did.

“There were only watchers on the closest roofs,” Genji said instead of a greeting, his tone carefully, painfully neutral. “The only other guards will be in the outer courtyards. There is no one to see this street.” His fingers drifted, ticking though the air ghost-texting as he did something with his systems or made a note.

McCree eyed the tall, blank wall of grey stone at the end of the street. “An’ the guards on the wall?” he asked.

Genji shook his head sharply. “There are no guards on the wall. Not anymore.”

“Huh. Handy, given we don’t have a hawk to pick ‘em off with anymore,” McCree mused aloud. He patted his pockets, reaching for a cigarillo, then remembered that he would be waiting in the dark and pulled out a toothpick to stick between his teeth instead. “Take it we’re plannin’ t’be well outta here before the shift change?” he asked around the sliver of wood.

“There will be no shift change,” Genji answered. “Not until after dawn.” His head tilted slightly, he must have caught McCree’s expression. “The Clan has been greatly reduced,” he said, his tone gaining something of a vindictive edge from the practised neutrality of before. “And even if they have recently gained more money somewhere, it has not increased the number of people working for them.”

“Makes you wonder what they’re up to with that new money besides raisin’ bounties with it,” McCree said thoughtfully. “An’ the setup tonight makes me wonder if they really want that bastard dead.”

“He is not a bastard, that is why,” Genji spoke softly, looking at the roofs of Shimada Castle rising over the wall at the end of the street instead of at McCree. “They would, I think, much prefer to force him to stay than see him dead.”

“Given what you’ve told me about your fucked-up family, I find that too easy to believe,” McCree agreed with regret.

Genji nodded slowly, his thoughts obviously somewhere far away.

Jesse dropped his hand onto Genji’s shoulder, resting it heavily on the left-hand side up near his neck so that he could feel it. “Keep your comm on,” he said, using the hold to pull the smaller man closer to his side. “For my peace o’ mind, if nothin’ else.”

Genji looked up at him. “I will.”

*********

  
Hanzo finished fastening his _yugake_ in place on his right hand and crouched down by his open bag. It felt strange to make his hand bypass his knives on the way to gathering up his mourning supplies. He felt their absence keenly as he carefully tucked the sticks of incense and tattered sparrow-hawk feather against his phone so that they wouldn’t get broken, but he still did not reach for them.

He would never carry a blade on Shimada ground again.

It was full dark, nearly midnight, and the neighbourhood around the Castle grew quiet early. There would be no bystanders, which was just as well. Hanzo double checked that his supplies for the small ceremony he was about to perform were secure, then zipped his bag closed and tucked it into the small space between two air conditioning units on the roof where it would not be easily spotted.

He carefully went over himself one last time, making sure his _hakama_ were properly tucked into the top of the guards that protected both his knee and the line where his cybernetic lower legs met flesh, adjusting his _kyudo-gi_ so that it lay smoothly without any uncomfortable bunching, and fidgeting the arrows in his quiver to make sure they were ready to draw.

His final step was to check Storm Bow, running his fingers along the body of the bow and thrumming the steel string with his thumb. Satisfied with both the feel and the sound, he strapped it over his shoulder for carrying.

It was time.

The arcade was just out of sight nearby, and the sole lookout for the street leading to the temple gate of Shimada Castle would be on its roof. Once that person was dealt with, Hanzo would have a clear run down the street to climb the gate. There would, of course, be guards in the temple courtyard, but he was confident that he would be able to deal with them just as he had every other year since he had started returning on this day.

Hanzo took a deep breath, shook the tension out of his shoulders, and dashed off the roof, heading for the arcade, a loosed arrow in the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Overwatch cinematic “Dragons” ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJ09xdxzIJQ ) occurs here. I strongly recommend watching it before reading the next chapter.
> 
> And now, this chapter’s easter egg: In terms of his in-game skins, the progression of Hanzo (and his hair) in the Back to the Fold universe is Young Master -> Scion -> Casual -> Classic.


	4. Chapter Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Overwatch cinematic “Dragons” ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJ09xdxzIJQ ) occurs here, right between this chapter and the previous one. I strongly recommend watching it before reading the chapter, because I’m not retelling it.

**Chapter Four**

  
Genji dropped soundlessly from the top of the wall surrounding Shimada Castle to the street outside. As he straightened up from his landing crouch, he stumbled as a sudden wave of exhaustion hit him, nearly tripping over his own feet before he was caught in strong arms.

“Shit, Genji,” McCree hissed, pulling his flesh hand away from the cyborg, “you’re hotter’n the Devil’s backside.”

Genji shook his head with a faint noise of amusement before resting the forehead of his helmet against McCree’s shoulder. “Didn’t vent enough,” he admitted, keeping his voice soft. “Too dangerous to stay still that long around him.” The overheating alert shone steadily in the corner of his eye, as it had been ever since he’d had to push his speed to dodge Hanzo’s scattering arrow. He didn’t dare change the setting from the conscious control that he used when stealth was necessary to automatic quite yet, not wanting to run the risk of burning McCree with the extended venting that would result.

McCree’s eyebrows went up. “Quick shot, is he?”

“Very.” Genji nodded without lifting his head. “Nearly as fast as you.”

“Mmm.” McCree adjusted his hold, his prosthetic hand sliding between the hilt of Genji’s katana and his neck to rest against his back just above his shoulder blades. “That makes you faster’n the both of us,” he pointed out. “So why’s he still breathin’? I may not follow enough Japanese t’know exactly what you were sayin’, but I do know you’d never talk to a corpse like that.”

Genji went perfectly, utterly still in McCree’s hold for a moment at the question. Then he made the noise that was the closest he could get to a hiss and sagged against the cowboy, fisting a hand in his serape.

“It’s... I could not,” he said into Jesse’s shoulder. “I thought that I could, that tonight... But...”

McCree wound his flesh fingers into Genji’s scarf and tugged lightly. “So, what changed your mind?” he asked, his tone curious.

“He summoned his dragons, and I used mine to turn them back at him,” Genji started. Suddenly, he urgently fumbled at the catches of his helmet’s visor piece, needing to look McCree directly in the eyes. He pulled it off and clutched it in one hand as he looked up into McCree’s concerned face as he continued. “They hurt him, Jesse. His own dragons.”

McCree sucked in an audible breath, and Genji could just barely feel him flexing his fingers in his scarf as it tugged lightly at the back of his head with the gesture.

“That was...” Genji looked down at the face-plate in his hand. “When I saw that, I think I realized that I had already forgiven him.” He looked up to McCree’s face again. “And then, he asked me to kill him. And I... I couldn’t, Jesse. I had my blade at his throat, and I could not.”

McCree untangled his fingers from Genji’s scarf so that he could lay it against his face, his thumb delicately brushing the scarred skin next to his eye. “Alright,” he said soothingly. “Alright. We’ll figure out how we’re goin’ on with things like this. We will.”

The skin Jesse was touching shivered faintly under his thumb, just enough for Genji to feel it as it moved. Genji stared up at the cowboy with wide eyes. “Yes?” He found his voice sounded hopeful. “Okay.”

“Let’s go back to the safehouse,” McCree offered gently. He shifted, lifting his hands from where they rested against Genji’s back and face to wrap his metal arm in a supportive hold around Genji’s still far too hot body, and then nudged him in the direction of where they had parked the team’s rental scooter that they had driven into Hanamura. “It’ll be better to work out how you want to go forward from this there, ‘stead of in the street with dawn comin’ on. Besides,” he added, “I’m wantin’ t’have Mercy have a look at you, you’re still runnin’ way too hot.”

Genji moved with the nudge without protest, cautiously letting his shoulder vents pop to bleed off some of the heat the cowboy was complaining about. “When did you become wise, Jesse McCree?”

McCree snorted. “Ain’t no wisdom here. Jus’ doin’ what needs to be done.”

“Wisdom enough. Thank you. For being here tonight.” Genji lifted his visor and snapped it back into place, leaving the ‘for me’ unsaid.

“Whenever you need it, darlin’,” McCree answered. “Bein’ or listenin’, whichever.” Briefly he tightened his grip, pulling Genji fully against his side before loosening his hold again.

Together, the two of them headed off into what remained of the night.

*********

  
At an hour before dawn, the phone pressed against Hanzo’s thigh vibrated, the alarm that he had set before tucking it there going off. The force of his yearly routine started his hands moving to pack his mourning supplies even before he consciously thought to do so. He took special care with the tattered old sparrow-hawk feather as he tucked it away, even though he had gained a newer one from the warrior who had said that he was Genji.

The ashes of the incense he had burned for his brother were dumped out directly onto the _tatami_ , a pointed message to those who knew how to read it.

His belongings gathered, Hanzo rose smoothly to his feet — an advantage of artificial limbs, he had found, was that one’s feet would never fall asleep, even after hours of sitting _seiza_ immediately after a difficult and vigorous battle. Most of his body ached, even to the very end of his hair it seemed, but his ankles and lower legs still moved as smoothly and easily as they ever had since they were installed.

With only a single undamaged arrow left in his quiver, he took special care exiting the Castle, keeping to the shadows and being especially cautious, opting to climb over the outer wall rather than leave the way that he had come in. In previous years he had usually stopped briefly to make sure that none of the guards that he had restrained on his way in had wriggled loose to raise an alarm. This year, after seeing a dragon other than his own for the first time in nearly fifteen years and with so little ammunition left it seemed far too dangerous an idea.

From where he had climbed over the wall, he took a circuitous route back to the arcade to check the lookout there. To his satisfaction, the hog-tied man was still there, though he had fallen over onto his side in trying to work his way loose, fortunately with his back to where Hanzo had poked his head up over the edge of the roof to take a look at him. Hanzo nodded to himself, then took another convoluted path back to the roof where he had stored his street clothes.

He did not, however, immediately change when he got there. Instead, he impulsively perched himself on the corner of the high parapet around the edge of the roof and pulled the gourd from his belt, wishing that it contained Sake as it was traditionally meant to rather than the tart lemon water he kept it filled with instead. He took a deep drink of it, determined to pretend that it contained the alcohol he craved despite knowing that it did not.

That man, that phantasm, that manifestation of Hanzo’s greatest sin that he had encountered just an hour or two before was not and could not possibly be Genji. In the heat of the moment, with the shock of seeing another dragon after so long, and electric pain still burning along his nerves he had believed, had been certain that he recognized the eyes as his brother’s and the pattern of scars around them as his own handiwork.

That was, hours later in the thin light of the beginning dawn, impossible. Utterly. Genji was dead, and Hanzo was the one who had ended him. And even if it had truly been his vengeful ghost given strange and solid form, the real Genji should only have had one scar that reached so close to his eyes, not the strange web-work of them Hanzo had seen, as if his face had been repeatedly slashed at.

Hanzo took another deep draught from his gourd.

It could not, however, have been a mere figment of his imagination dodging and shattering his arrows, turning his own dragons against him, and holding a blade to his throat that night. Hanzo lifted his hand to his adam’s apple, remembering the kiss of the _tanto_ against it. No, that had been real. Entirely real.

And if it had truly been the ghost of the brother that he had killed, it would have appeared to him as Genji, not as some utterly unrecognizable metal form, no matter how recognizable the eyes that were hidden behind that glowing green visor seemed.

So. Neither a figment of his imagination, nor a vengeful ghost. Hanzo rolled his gourd thoughtfully between his palms, staring sightlessly down into the empty street below, and remembered the last words his opponent had said to him.

“ _The world is changing once again, Hanzo, and it’s time to pick a side._ ”

Of course. The Shimada elders. There had been more than enough time since Hanzo had left for some branch family’s child to have fortuitously awakened a dragon of the correct approximate shade. It was far from common for the branch houses to produce someone with a strong enough soul, but Hanzo’s own dual pair were just as rare — especially since his mother had been from outside the Clan. Perhaps the Shimada were simply undergoing a time of waxing in power.

And the elders certainly wanted Hanzo to return badly enough to attempt a ruse such as his dead brother appearing before him to call him home. Especially when their previous attempts had failed so abjectly. Hanzo’s mind went back to the long-limbed woman with the unhealthy, oddly blue, cast to her skin and her hazel-golden gaze of such intensity that it had nearly had a physical force that had met him instead of the mission intel that he had been lead to expect maybe a year or so before.

“ _Talon could restore your empire,_ ” she had promised, her French accent so thick over the English that he had almost not understood the words.

He had laughed at her, of course. If he had wanted the Shimada empire, he would have stayed. He had, in fact, taken some pleasure in the Clan’s loss of power and influence in his absence.

Hanzo finished off the contents of the gourd. It would not be a good thing if the Shimada had regained a dragon. Better that the Clan fell to dust. And there was the matter of bringing them to task for their ruse. How dare they disrespect the dead in such a manner and for such a petty reason.

And there was also the matter of one of the branch houses producing offspring who had awakened their dragon. That was a thing that definitely needed to be investigated.

There was only one obvious choice. Hanzo would have to remain in Hanamura temporarily to deal with the matter. The idea was not to his taste; the town was too full of memories to be comfortable, even after so many years had passed since he had spent more than a few days at a time there once a year. Still, to his taste or not, it was what needed to be done, and so Hanzo would do it despite the ghosts of his memories hanging over him.

He nodded to himself, decision made. He didn’t bother to reattach the empty gourd to his belt, since he was simply going to have to remove it again in moments when he changed back into his street clothes. With that thought in mind, he left his seat and retrieved his bag from where it had been hidden between the air conditioning units on the roof.

It was much faster to change back into his casual clothes than it had been to put on the traditional garments that he used for battle and his yearly return to Shimada Castle. He took his time, however, in folding and packing his _hakama_ and _kyudo-gi_ back into the bag so that they wouldn’t crease.

Tucking his quiver away in the bag, Hanzo knelt on the roof in the slowly growing light and slowly, methodically examined Storm Bow from end to end, both by eye and touch. A bow, even one made of metal, made a poor club, and an even poorer sword; there was most likely to be damage from the mistreatment he had given it during the fight with the fake Genji. Sure enough, he found a few gouges on the body of the weapon: deep bites into the protective coating that thankfully, luckily, did not quite reach through the dark blue enamel to the silver metal below.

The bow-sight, however, was far more concerning. It had been wrenched entirely out of shape, either when Hanzo had caught his attacker’s blade with the bow or when he had hurled the man off of him just afterwards. It would need to be repaired. He frowned darkly to himself as he fingered it, debating whether it could simply be bent back into place, or if the entire part would have to be replaced.

He should have brought more arrows. Obviously, he had allowed himself to grow complacent after the years of gaining access to his former estate as easily as he had been. To be reduced to using his bow as a mere club was a sour blot on both his skills and his preparation. It would not happen again.

Hanzo carefully packed Storm Bow away in his bag and stood, slinging it onto his back. The light was growing, and the various workers in the area would start arriving soon if they were not already doing so. It was time for him to return to his capsule hotel, to lose himself in _sochu_ and to sleep, if he could.

On an impulse, he took a route that swung close enough to Shimada Castle for him to get a brief overview of part of the grounds, away from the Temple courtyard that he had used the previous night. The inner courtyard he looked into was serene, empty except for a servant using the first morning light to sweep the tiles. When he had lived there, this had been his favourite time of day, when the light of the rising sun would first reach his balcony and there was just enough time to savour a freshly brewed cup of tea there in the breeze before it was time for the day’s duties to begin.

The thought ached like a rotten tooth in his mind. Hanzo turned sharply and leapt away, cursing himself for a fool to have strayed so close to the Shimada grounds again so soon. He was in such a hurry to be gone that he only just barely checked himself from jumping down into a street directly in front of a large van with a florists’ logo emblazoned on its sides, tipping too far over the edge of a roof before he noticed it and having to scramble ingloriously back onto the ledge.

He caught a flash of bright golden hair and a blur of a pale face looking toward him from the passenger seat of the vehicle just as it passed him, and snarled. His scrabble to prevent sliding down the building had attracted attention, exactly when he least wanted or needed it. He would have to be even more cautious returning to his hotel now, and his _sochu_ had slipped yet another hour or two further away.

His luck, Hanzo decided, was quite possibly at the lowest ebb that he had ever yet experienced. He would have to be even more careful lest it see him dead before it turned. If it turned. Perhaps he should make a trip to Kyoto to visit the shrines there and make a few petitions for better fortune once he had concluded the issue of the fake Genji to his satisfaction.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For making it through the angst and the emo, an easter egg for all of you: Both Hanzo and Genji are extremely superstitious (and both of them will vehemently deny it if confronted about it). Back in Blackwatch days McCree once stuck his chopsticks upright in his rice before a raid on the Shimada and Genji refused to speak to him for nearly two months.


	5. Chapter Five

**Chapter Five**

  
Without any surprise on his part at the decision, Zenyatta had been left behind in the safehouse when the Recall team went to Shimada Castle to gain access to the _yakusa_ family’s accounts. He was not disappointed. While he had insisted on coming along to Hanamura, he knew that his particular skills would be of little use on the mission itself. He had come for Genji’s sake, not for that of the new Overwatch, so he had not protested when Winston had said that he should not come along.

Deep down in his most private sectors, Zenyatta had been far more amused when the ape had tried to say that Mercy should also remain behind. Mainly because the reactions of the entire rest of the team, including Mercy herself had been so completely aghast. Particularly those of McCree and Tracer. Though Doctor Ziegler explaining in a tight, cold voice just how vanishingly unlikely it was that she would be letting Genji out of her sight after ‘his foolishness’ last night had come in a very close second in the level of amusement it had provided.

Zenyatta would remember to ask Genji later just what it was that he and his cowboy had been up to the night before. Particularly with it involving the two of them departing so subtly that no one had realized that they were gone until they had stumbled back into the safehouse many hours after midnight. Even if his curiosity somehow eased on the matter, Zenyatta had made sure to set a reminder, just in case.

That was something for the future. In the meantime, Zenyatta contented himself with watching the wind and the birds in the trees of the safehouse yard, and listening in on the team comms as they carried out their mission.

He had muted the feeds from McCree and Genji once the Shimada accountant that they were looking for was found.

Three of the trees in the yard were _sakura_. They had started blooming the day after the team had arrived. They were close to being in full bloom now, and it was as beautiful a sight as it had been promised to be, in several of the spectrums visible to him. As far as Zenyatta was concerned, that alone was well worth his having made the trip aside from being there to support Genji, though he had also hoped to make contact with some of Izanami’s children to exchange protocols as well. That had not yet happened, but there was still another day or two before they would be leaving Japan, so it could still occur. He would hope for the chance to go out in the time remaining, as there was sure to be at least one other omnic somewhere in the town.

With Genji and McCree muted, and Winston and Mercy keeping watch in the hall and at the door respectively, the mission communications were almost silent, so when Tracer suddenly yipped like a small dog in between her regular check-ins from her lookout outside of the Castle it was far more startling than it should have been. The yelp of what Zenyatta could only assume was surprise was almost immediately followed by the buzzing, almost musical hum of the woman’s chronal accelerator activating, and a swift blip of the sound of her earlier yip in reverse.

“Tracer?” Winston said.

“Tracer, report,” Mercy called at almost the same time.

“Took a bad footing,” Tracer responded quickly, “an’ had a bit of a tumble. These roof tiles are slick!”

There was a brief pause, a space of silence.

“Oh, issat the trick?” Tracer said. “Thanks, Genji!”

Zenyatta did not hear his student’s response, just as he had not heard his advice.

“Were you spotted?” Winston asked.

“Don’t think so?” Tracer hazarded. “Pretty sure I’m behind the guard I spotted ‘ere.”

“They may have heard you,” Mercy said. “You should change position. But carefully.”

“I’ll sneak off to the side an’ see if anyone comes to check,” Tracer informed the team. “Any clues how much longer we’ll be?”

Winston made a grumbling noise, but before he could answer, Mercy spoke again.

“Such things are not so easy to judge,” she said, sounding remarkably calm. “But I do not think this man will refuse to answer for much longer.”

Winston spluttered. “Mercy, they’re-”

“These were Genji’s people,” the doctor interrupted him, still sounding untroubled. “He knows what needs to be done.”

While her words were certainly true, Zenyatta reflected, that did not make what his student and the cowboy were currently doing to the accountant any more palatable to consider. And Mercy’s utter coldness toward the matter bore some thought as well. He had not come to know Doctor Ziegler very well yet, given that she had spent so much of the time since her return to Overwatch assisting in the refurbishment of their base while Zenyatta had mostly remained at the Lindholm compound to reassure the Bastion during that time. Still, it seemed strange for a renowned humanitarian and doctor as she was to sound so callous.

Then again, Zenyatta suspected that Mercy knew even more of Genji’s past within the Shimada than what his student had shared with him, and even as little as Genji had said left the monk feeling little charity toward the family. Perhaps Mercy’s lack of compassion was just as easily explained.

The breeze tossed the cherry blossoms on their trees, and Zenyatta remembered a story Genji had mentioned once about how _sakura_ trees with red blossoms had bodies buried among their roots.

“You’re right, somebody ‘eard me,” Tracer reported. “I’m going to lead them on a bit of a chase away.”

“Be careful,” Winston said, care and worry clear in the two words.

“I’m hard to catch, Win, buck up!” Tracer reassured him.

There was another short silence.

“I-” a zipping noise, “-miss ‘aving one’a Captain Amari’s hawks watching me-” another zip, Tracer was apparently leading her pursuer on quite a chase, “-back for these too.” She laughed quietly and a little breathlessly. “Especially right about now!”

Captain Amari. That had been one of the leaders of Overwatch. Zenyatta turned over his memory. She had been second in command, until her death on a mission. A sniper of renowned skill. He knew nothing about her having any hawks, however, or of what possible use birds could be on a military mission. Perhaps he would ask Genji about it, after finding out what the cyborg and the cowboy had been doing the night before that had so angered Mercy.

“Alright, I’m coming,” Winston said. “McCree, if you would take over watching the hall?” There was a pause in which Zenyatta could faintly hear the gorilla’s heavy footfalls. “Is... Does he need any medical attention?”

“No, he does not,” Mercy answered, cold as mountain ice.

After a moment, Zenyatta took the mute off of McCree’s comm feed, but the man was currently silent.

Time passed as Winston typed and muttered to himself and Athena, who was not permitting Zenyatta to listen to her, and Tracer led her pursuer or pursuers on quite a chase before losing them. The only notable event in that time was when someone unexpectedly brought the Shimada accountant tea. McCree heard them coming, however, and both warned the team and somehow hid himself where he could deliver a near-silent neutralizing blow without the tea service being sent crashing to the floor. Zenyatta found himself both curious and impressed. Mercy drank the tea, and pronounced it quite good for being an unsweetened green, much to Tracer’s amusement.

Zenyatta watched the birds and the cherry blossoms.

“Alright, it’s done. Quite a lot in there, we’ll be in a good situation from this for some time,” Winston said finally. “And I think that, ah, Athena and I have made it so it won’t be traced back to us.”

“Destroy the computer,” McCree advised. “Tracer, you got eyes on our exit?”

“Not yet!” Tracer reported. “Will in two ticks!”

The sound of crunching metal and plastic breaking filtered though Winston’s comm feed. “I’ll just take the drives,” the ape said thoughtfully. “That will keep them from reconstructing them. Besides, there might be something useful on them. Like a lead on their new sponsor.”

“Good idea,” McCree agreed. “Best we get movin’. Winston, you take point.”

Zenyatta spun one of his sutra balls on his fingers thoughtfully. As both the biggest and the noisiest member of the team, Winston had not been put on point when they were entering.

“I’m right behind you, Winston,” Mercy announced.

“We’ll be right behind you, Doc,” McCree said easily. “Genji.” There was a wealth of meaning in the two syllables of the cyborg’s name, some of which Zenyatta did not understand.

What he did understand of it led him to leave his student’s comm feed muted for the rest of the extraction from Shimada Castle.

When the team returned to the safehouse and Zenyatta set about helping them to strip the florist decals from the sides of the van, he noticed that there was blood in the joints of Genji’s hands, a far greater amount than there should have been from the Recall members’ careful sneaking through the halls of the Castle, and he felt a strangely muted sense of grief. He had realized, of course, that any witness who would have been able to identify the group was going to die, but he had — perhaps foolishly — hoped that it wouldn’t be at Genji’s hands. His student had only ever expressed animosity toward his kin, it was true, still, Zenyatta did not understand how one could bring themselves to hurt or even kill a member of their own family. His siblings, those who remained, were precious to him, made even more so by the ones he had lost even though The Iris remained.

He feared that with each Shimada death by his hands Genji could be losing essential pieces of himself that could never be recovered.

Zenyatta could only hope that when Genji had snuck out the night before that it had not been in order to finally end his brother’s life. That death was one that the monk feared would be the final irreparable break within his student.

*********

  
Hanzo abruptly found himself awake, catapulted from drunken slumber to full consciousness so suddenly that he only barely checked himself in time before he bolted upright and slammed his head on the lid of his sleeping capsule, his abdominals aching from the suddenly arrested motion.

There was no apparent reason for him to be awake; his capsule was still dim, and the only sound was the softly-playing recording of wind blowing through trees in the rain that he had set it to before finally opening a first bottle of _sochu_. According to the clock when he waved at it to bring up its display, he had only lost a handful of hours to welcome alcohol-induced oblivion. Nowhere near as long as he had hoped it would last.

He had been dreaming. Somehow, it had been something in his dream that had thrown him into wakefulness, but as he groped for the memory, the details slipped away like water through his fingers. All he was left with was a memory of writhing cobalt and ice-blue scales and a sense of a terribly urgent message that had to be delivered. Maddeningly, he knew that it was the sheer urgency of that message that had woken him, but the content had been utterly lost in the transition from dream to waking.

Irritated, he waved the soft nature sounds off with a sharp gesture. Unneeded adrenaline was singing through his veins, and he knew it would keep him from sleeping again any time soon.

Lying back down on his side, he curled into a tight ball until he could very nearly rest his bearded chin on his bare knees and considered his options for the near future.

He had drunk an entire bottle and a half of _sochu_ before sleep would come to him, and while he still had another unopened bottle he would need to buy more soon, especially if he was going to be staying in Hanamura. There was also the investigation into the fake Genji keeping him in his hometown to be started, his bow-sight to be repaired, and new arrows to be made. Of these things, the investigation was the one he wanted to do the least, so it was the one he should begin with. Delaying or choosing to finish one of the other tasks before beginning would only make it harder on himself.

And besides, he reminded himself as he slowly and reluctantly started to uncurl, the sooner he identified and dealt with the imposter and whatever his family was plotting with the ruse, the sooner he could leave Hanamura behind him for another year.

The capsule hotel was all but abandoned in the odd afternoon hour he had awakened in. While that was something of a good thing, Hanzo decided that he should find another place to stay soon — one that his movements would be less noticeable at — rather than extend his visit there. His rented time extended to the next morning. Plenty of time to choose a new hotel.

But first, Shimada Castle. Hanzo dressed quickly, filled his quiver with new arrows, strung Storm Bow, bent the sight closer to true as a temporary fix, and slung it over his shoulder, then took to the rooftops of Hanamura.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter’s easter egg: Zenyatta has several more siblings besides Mondatta. Many of them are still alive, but sadly Mondatta’s is not the only death amongst them.


	6. Chapter Six

**Chapter Six**

The gates of the Castle were closed. All of them, in the middle of the afternoon when they ordinarily should have been open. Hanzo drew up short at the sight, then noticed that sentries had been posted along the walls as well.

The Castle had not needed wall sentries during the day since his Grandfather’s time ruling the Clan, during the Omnic Crisis. Their presence was unprecedented, inexplicable, especially when combined with the closed gates.

Something had happened. Hanzo fingered Storm Bow where it rested against the back of his hip. Something had to have happened, something more than his own predictable annual attack the night before to cause a reaction such as the one he was seeing.

Hanzo folded himself more into the shadows, glad that his eyesight was still sharp enough to watch from so far away since he was still wary of getting closer, even though the usual outer ring of watchers had apparently been pulled in to help man the walls. An unwise move, in his opinion. The Clan must have been even more reduced than he had thought. The revelation was both appalling and strangely comforting at the same time.

There had to be some way to find out what had happened while he had been drunkenly sleeping the day away. Cautiously, Hanzo circled the Castle at a distance, eyeing the hasty defensive measures for openings. If he could get into the Castle without being spotted, he could perhaps do some investigating or eavesdropping to learn something.

To his surprise, he recognized some of the faces of the people manning the walls, not only from some of his previous yearly returns, but also some from the days when he had lead the Clan, young men and women then — people close to his own or Genji’s age, destined to become his first circle. He had not realized that so many of them had survived the brutal Overwatch raids that had wracked the Clan after his departure.

They were, he realized, ideal. Older, more skilled, more experienced, the people who had once been closest to Hanzo covered larger sections of the wall on their own and kept watch on the more isolated corners without having any nearby backup. Not only that, but they were likely to still consider Hanzo to be the rightful leader of the Clan. All he would have to do was ask, and one of them would just tell him what he needed to know. Simple.

Hanzo selected his target carefully. Even if all he had to do was ask, being seen doing so would be far less than ideal given that he would prefer the Clan to think that their trick had failed and that he was already long gone from Hanamura. He found what he was looking for on a particularly obscure corner of the Castle wall where it bent at a sharp angle away from one of the cliffs that marked the eastern edge of the property. Standing and idly smoking while leaning on the corner blocks was a man that Hanzo remembered as someone that Genji had sometimes dragged along with him to ‘parties’. The man’s name escaped him, but Hanzo remembered how after Genji’s death he had been one of the ones who had become frightened and tried to ingratiate themselves to Hanzo, fearing that since they had shared the Sparrow’s fun that they might come under suspicion and also share his fate.

The cliff-face was little trouble to Hanzo once he took off his boots to expose the climbing grips on his feet and hid them at the bottom of it. The edge proved rather dry and crumbling, however, so he had to slow down significantly when he pulled himself over it to keep from sending chunks cascading noisily to the ground and alerting his target.

There was a massive tree on the Clan side of the wall, just beyond the bend, probably planted to disguise the strange angle of the corner from anyone who was walking in the garden. Hanzo slid cautiously into a place parallel to where it loomed over the wall and climbed up the stones on the far side of it from his target. From there, he was gratified to find that some of the more sturdy branches were in reach to allow him to pull himself slowly and carefully into the concealment of it’s leaves, such as there were.

He froze there for a time, draped along the branch. He had not performed any sort of infiltration during daylight for many years, preferring the more predictable and easier to use concealment offered by the night. He could not be sure how much the tree’s branches would continue to conceal him if he moved, especially considering the royal blue colour of his coat — though that was still better than the black shirt he was wearing beneath it. After some thought, he decided that what he really needed was a distraction.

He could have used an arrow, but after the fight the previous night he was somewhat reluctant to lose more of them, especially since he had not yet taken the time to make more. The next best option seemed a better choice, even though he had not actually used it in several years. He moved slowly to settle himself back against the trunk of the tree and closed his eyes, taking a few deep, calming breaths.

Many years ago, when he was far younger, he had made attempts to explain what it felt like to detach a part of his soul, to peel it away and let it take physical form. For someone who could not perform the action themselves, however, nothing he had ever found to say had ever been adequate. The only part of it that he had ever come close to managing to impart was the sensation of his self, his consciousness, splitting into multiple bodies.

He opened each set of his eyes one at a time, avoiding the dizzy feeling that could result from trebling his vision all at once. Then he stretched out his backs, getting used to being in three bodies again after many years of keeping himself confined in just one. He kept his dragon bodies mostly translucent, hoping to not be visible from a distance.

Keeping his human body in the tree for the moment, he flew over to his target, staying low to the ground until he was practically up against the wall beneath the man he had chosen as his target. It helped that the watch on the Castle was being kept outward rather than inward, as there was no cover as he swiftly swarmed up the wall. Rising behind the man, he imperiously and very deliberately flicked one of his tails across his face, hard enough to sting, as he launched his remaining self out of the cover of the tree.

The man yelped, and swatted at the air. Hanzo had, inadvertently, caught him in the eye with the smack. Though it may have been accidental, it was an opening all the same. An opportunity too good to bear wasting.

Hanzo surged into the attack, sweeping the man’s legs out from under him with one body even as another pinned his arms and the third slammed into him and rode him to the ground. They landed with a bone-jarring thud, Hanzo on top, and the man’s head met the stone of the top of the wall with a meaty-sounding thump.

The man blinked up at him, visibly dazed. “Sh- Shimada-dono?” he asked.

Hanzo snarled, not sure which of him he was doing it with and not caring. He had not thought this through enough, had not considered the consequences of revealing himself until he had already done it. He was in his street clothes, leaning in close enough that the man had to see the flesh-toned plugs still in his piercings from the night before since he had not bothered to change out of them before he had started drinking.

Shame coursed through him. He was a fool. An idiot without forethought. And now a man whose name he could not even remember was going to have to die to pay for Hanzo’s impatience and lack of strategy.

There was no time to indulge in wallowing in his mistakes, however. Hanzo had done this for answers, and answers he would have.

He tightened his claws in the man’s clothing.

“What has happened here?” Hanzo demanded in Japanese. “Why is the Castle on high alert with the gates closed?”

Admittedly, the situation could be a yearly occurrence, a response to Hanzo’s brief return, but that was doubtful given the insultingly weak defences he encountered each time. It would make no sense to practically let him walk in and then out again only to go on high alert after he had gone. And the only difference this year from his previous visits was his battle with the fake, and the way that had ended had not deserved a response such as this.

“Shimada-sama...” the man practically went cross-eyed trying to peer at the dragon with his claws latched into his shoulder without moving his head.

“Answer the question!” Hanzo snapped, giving him a shake and a small shock.

The man let out a high-pitched gasping whine at the touch of lightning. “Attacked,” he gasped out. “We were attacked! They broke into the Castle!”

Hanzo increased the intensity of his glare. “What was stolen?”

The man stared up at him with wide eyes and said nothing.

Angry, Hanzo shocked him again, getting a punched-out noise in response. “Answer the question!” he snarled. “What did they take?”

“I don’t know!” the man cried, trying to pull himself away from Hanzo’s dragon bodies and the pain they could deliver. “I know they killed, but nothing more than that. Please, Shimada-sama!”

Hanzo’s anger only grew greater each time the man called him ‘Shimada-sama’, mixing sourly with the self-loathing from his realization of his lack of foresight. The air was beginning to smell distinctly of ozone.

“Stop that pathetic whining,” Hanzo ordered, fighting to keep his head clear instead of falling into a blinding rage. “Who was killed? How many?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know, they didn’t tell me!” the man cried.

Hanzo considered the answer. It was likely to be true. The Clan members who had been particular friends of Genji had been thrown into disgrace by his death and the reasons why it had occurred, which he had forgotten to consider when choosing his target. And now that he thought on it, the man had most likely suffered an even further loss of status when Hanzo had left. It made sense that he would have been told little, and Hanzo should have realized as such much earlier.

He should have waited before starting his investigation, given the alcohol he had drunk more time to depart his system before making plans. His actions had been those of a fool, and it was only luck that it had not yet cost him dearly.

Still, there was one more question to be asked.

“The battle last night,” Hanzo snarled. “What was the plan?”

The man stared up at him with wide, confused eyes. “A battle? Last night?” he repeated Hanzo’s words back to him. “I only heard that you’d killed two of the lookouts.”

Hanzo reared back slightly in surprise. This man had been one of Genji’s frequent companions, both before and after their Father’s death, going to parties together and passing time in each other’s company. It was why, try as he might, Hanzo could not remember his name; he had been Genji’s, not his, even after his brother’s death. Disgraced as the man might have been by Genji’s and Hanzo’s decisions, he would have been a prime source to be consulted for ways to make the fake Genji more authentic.

Then again, Hanzo considered, there had not just been disgrace within the Clan for Genji’s companions, there had also been suspicion. Especially after Hanzo had abandoned them, there would have been little they could have done to erase that distrust. And though the man was missing a finger that Hanzo was fairly certain he had not lacked before his abandonment, it was impossible to tell simply from looking at it why it had been removed or when. It was possible, even probable, that the man had indeed provided information about Genji but without the reason for doing so having been provided to him by the interrogator.

And it was odd that they would claim that he had killed the lookout. When he had checked on him as he had left he had still been alive. Though it was entirely possible that he had been killed for his negligence on watch, with Hanzo conveniently taking the blame. It would have been foolish to do so with the Clan already so reduced, but not beyond the realm of possibility. It was something that Hanzo’s father would have ordered, had he still been alive.

Perhaps, then, that was the way it had been every year, even as Hanzo himself had restricted his kills to omnics and those people without the familiar hum of the family legacy beneath their heartbeat. The thought was sour.

“Shimada-sama,” the man beneath him gasped. “Please, Shimada-sama, I don’t know anything.”

Hanzo had been silent too long, wrapped in his own thoughts. Each time the man said ‘Shimada-sama’ it raked across his already frayed nerves and temper like being entangled in a net made of rusty barbed wire.

“If you know nothing, you are no use to me,” he said, cold as a glacial spring. He watched dispassionately over the man’s shoulder as his hands, strong from decades of archery, closed around his neck and squeezed.

It was over quickly, with little struggling: Hanzo was more than strong enough, with large enough hands to crush both trachea and carotid arteries at once in his grip. When it was done, he stood and rolled his shoulders before gathering himself together into a singular body once more.

He would not be learning more that day. It was too risky to try for another person to act as an informant. Leaving the corpse where it lay, Hanzo slipped back over the wall and was gone.

*********

  
“It’s no good, Win,” Tracer said into her phone. Genji glanced up to where the woman sat on the rear edge of the plane’s wing, her legs swinging as she talked.

There was a pause as Winston responded.

“No, it’s not going to ‘make do’ ‘til we get back,” Tracer answered with a little heat. “It’s not a little micro-fracture only Zenyatta can see, it’s a crack I can put me fingernail in. No way I’m flying over the whole Pacific with it like that. We’re going to have to be ordering a new one.”

“I, also, would prefer not to plunge into the Pacific Ocean,” Zenyatta spoke for the first time since Tracer had pulled herself upright from the engine and gotten out her phone. Genji still couldn’t see his mentor, hidden somewhere behind the open maintenance hatch.

“Yes, the plane crashing into the ocean would be possible,” Tracer sighed into the phone, and Genji guessed that Zenyatta and Winston had probably spoken at the same time. The pattern of Tracer’s swinging legs changed as she stared up at the ceiling of the hangar, listening to her phone. “Kind of the problem with equipment being in mothballs for years an’ years,” she said after a minute, the tone of her voice much more agreeable than it had been becoming. “I’ll see about ordering the part, and get back to you on the result, alright?”

There was another pause, during which Zenyatta drifted down from the wing to the floor of the hangar.

“Don’t be borrowing trouble yet, Win,” Tracer said soothingly. “It’s just ordering a part. I’ll talk again to you soon. Bye!”

She hung up on the call and jumped down, landing with an entirely unnecessary triple bounce on the floor.

“So we will not be flying today?” Genji asked, not caring which one of the other two answered, figuring that either one could.

Tracer made a face. “Not unless they happen to have parts for a twenty-year-old engine right on hand,” she sighed. “If we were back on base, maybe there’d be something around, or we could fab one up, but ‘ere...” She shrugged.

“I see,” Genji said.

“Anyway, I’m going to go see ‘bout getting that part,” Tracer said, bouncing on her toes. “Need a little run-around after being pent up in the ‘ouse so long anyway, and that rooftop work yesterday didn’t count. You two alright for staying with the plane?”

“Certainly,” Zenyatta answered for both of them. “Genji and I are used to keeping each other’s company.”

“Good on.” Tracer nodded as if the words that had just come out of her mouth made perfect sense together. “Be back once I get things sorted, then!” She gave a quick wave of her hand and flickered off in a series of brief streaks of blue-white light.

Genji watched her go, unworried. The airport was safe enough, especially given that McCree had made sure that their plane was registered as belonging to a private international courier service when they had arranged the hangar parking for it. And with their raid on Shimada Castle having just been the day before, he doubted that the Clan’s investigation into the culprits would have extended into searching the airport just yet. The only reason Genji was even along for the plane’s engine check was because Zenyatta and Tracer had needed someone to drive them to the hangar to do their pre-flight checks, not for security.

With no idea of how long Tracer would take, Genji cast about the hangar for a moment before he spotted a set of large wheel-stops stacked against the wall. He went and sat on them for lack of a better option being available without sitting on the unpleasantly dusty floor or getting on the plane. Just because the airport was relatively safe for the time being was no reason to wait somewhere filthy or from where he couldn’t watch the exits.

Zenyatta followed him, settling near his seat, just barely out of arm’s reach as Genji did his best to make himself comfortable on the solid blocks. There was a long, easy silence between them as Genji adjusted, searching for a sitting position that wouldn’t make his butt go numb, before he reluctantly concluded that no such position existed on his chosen seat and resigned himself to having to remember to move occasionally.

Zenyatta spent the time adjusting his sutra balls, resetting them manually one at a time to their usual wide orbit around his neck and shoulders from the tight and much slower-moving pattern he had put them into to keep them out of the way while he and Tracer had been inspecting the engines and wiring on the plane. The soft chimes as the monk touched each ball were familiar and soothing.

“This journey has been a source of turmoil for you, my student,” Zenyatta said at last after some time had passed. “I hope that the stay having been extended will not make matters worse for you.”

It should not have surprised Genji to hear his mentor say such a thing and yet he was still caught off guard all the same, as well as by Zenyatta’s choice to converse in English. He shifted in his seat uneasily.

“Even though I have been coming to Hanamura every year, it does not become any easier,” Genji said finally after some thought. He flexed his hands, watching his fingers move.

“And why would that be?” Zenyatta asked.

Genji continued flexing and relaxing his hands, watching the tiny pistons and moving pieces rather than looking at Zenyatta. He had lost the right one, his sword hand, from the original fight with Hanzo. The left had been one of the prices he had paid in his own flesh for letting Doomfist throw him into and nearly through the side of a car. And yet, now, both hands were the same despite the years between each one’s installation and the difference in the reasons for them.

Zenyatta waited, as patient as he always was.

Genji decided.

“My brother is here,” he said. “Every year. That is why.”

“Did you not tell me that your brother had abandoned the family?” Zenyatta asked with a slight head tilt.

“I did. He did.” Genji clenched his hand into a fist. “He returns. To sit in memorial on the night of our battle.”

“Ah,” the monk murmured.

“I... watch him,” Genji admitted. “When I come to Hanamura.”

Zenyatta turned to look at him more fully. “You took McCree with you, this year,” he said, his tone thoughtful.

“This year...” Genji said, forcing the words out, “this year I did not mean to just watch.”

“I see,” Zenyatta hummed. “And thus the reason Doctor Ziegler was so upset with the both of you when you returned, perhaps.” He folded his hands in his lap.

“She was angry, yes,” Genji agreed. “She had every reason to be. After all, the last time I encountered my brother...” he waved a hand up and down at himself rather than finish the sentence or mention just how badly overheated he had gotten from the battle the night before last.

“Some time has passed since then,” Zenyatta said. “And if he, too, is returning each year, that would seem to indicate regret on his part.”

“I cannot know that,” Genji admitted quietly. “Hanzo could be doing it for form’s sake, or for himself alone as easily as because of any regret he may have.”

“A fair point.” Zenyatta paused, then tilted his head to the side, ever so slightly. “Do you wish to tell me what happened that night?”

“He thought I was a hired assassin at first,” Genji told him almost immediately. “We fought. I won. I didn’t kill him.” The blocks under him were hard, and there was still a faint twinge in his back from the fight that he had chosen not to tell Angela about. “I did not kill him,” he repeated wonderingly.

“That is not what you expected of yourself, then.” There was something in Zenyatta’s tone that seemed just faintly amused.

“It was not,” Genji agreed quietly. “I thought that I would, but when the time came...” He spread his hands helplessly. “He is my brother.”

Zenyatta hummed again, a soft, comforting sound. “You sound as if you are lost, my student.”

Genji nodded. He was lost. Everything that he had expected of the trip to Hanamura that year had been overturned in the instant that he had found himself unable to slit Hanzo’s throat. “I... I think I want my brother back,” he said slowly, feeling his way tentatively along the new, unknown road he found himself on. “To rebuild what we had before, as much as it is possible now.”

Genji could not remember a time that he did not love his brother. Even as he had seethed with anger and rage at the Shimada Clan, at what had been done to him, at the inescapable inhumanness of his rebuilt body, he had never hated Hanzo. Been incandescently angry at him, yes, certainly. Wanted to visit upon him what he had done, yes, sometimes. Killing him had seemed only what Hanzo had deserved. But even in that, Genji had still loved him.

The way that Hanzo had said “ _Do it then. Kill me,_ ” that night, with Genji’s blade at his neck, the tone of his voice had reached into Genji’s very being and had laid fingers upon the solid core of that love.

And Hanzo did not deserve the release of the death that he sought.

“Having back the relationship you once had would indeed be easier with both of you being alive,” Zenyatta said. “Though I am guessing you did not exchange contact information at the end of your encounter.”

Genji laughed hollowly. “I spouted some bullshit about choosing sides and ran away,” he admitted.

“Ah, choosing sides.” Zenyatta nodded. “Such as choosing between carrying one’s anger forever like a precious stone, or of letting it go and finally allowing time to move forward again.” His tone was sage and yet mischievous.

“Something like that, only with less explanation attached,” Genji agreed, remembering when Zenyatta had first given him the order to choose, in very much the same words as the monk had just repeated, if not the same exact ones.

He shifted on the blocks again, no position staying comfortable for long.

“Master, I do not know my path forward from here,” he admitted. “If Hanzo is even still in Hanamura anymore, I don’t think I could just exchange addresses with him now.” He hung his head. “Or even if a rift as large as the one between us could be bridged by exchanging mail.”

“I believe you are correct in that,” Zenyatta agreed. “Although it could be a place to begin.”

Genji turned that over in his mind. “No,” he decided aloud. “Unless Hanzo has changed a very great deal it would not be enough. Letters and mail are too easy to destroy without reading them.”

“And calls can be left unanswered.” Zenyatta shifted into a more thoughtful pose. “It would seem that the only path left to your goal is to work in person.”

Genji nodded, having come to much the same conclusion. The problem was, of course, in carrying it out. Not only was Hanzo in the wind, his reaction to Genji’s being Genji had been immediate denial and rejection. Genji had no doubt that should he track his brother down again to attempt a reconciliation Hanzo would flee as quickly as dignity would allow him to, just as he had fled the Clan.

It was a tempting idea to simply snatch up his brother and take him someplace even someone of his considerable skills could not easily escape, like the Shambali Monastery with its new sharp protective walls and keep him there until the two of them finally properly talked to each other for perhaps the first time since their father had died. Tempting, but foolish, and guaranteed not to work. Hanzo would never stop fighting and attempting to escape for long enough to even exchange a sentence.

However, the thought did present another path leading to a similar idea. A place where Hanzo and he could interact without either of them being able to run too far from each other to easily return and try again. A situation that Hanzo would not or could not abandon easily with his dignity and honour intact.

The thought collided with the memory of McCree lamenting their team’s lack of a sniper to watch their backs on the night he had confronted Hanzo, and then again as they had wrapped up the mission to steal the Shimada funds for the recall.

Genji reached up his own sleeve and found a score that one of Hanzo’s arrows had left on his forearm plate with his thumb, his eyes going wide as the solution unfolded in his mind.

“I have an idea,” he told Zenyatta eagerly. “If Hanzo is still in town, if I can convince him-”

He was interrupted as a blue blur practically ricocheted into the hangar, resolving into a slightly wild-looking Lena only as she stopped near Genji and Zenyatta.

“Six to eight business days!” she announced in an aggrieved tone of deep tragedy without any preamble. “Nearly two weeks to order a part we coulda printed up in just hours back at the base!”

She flung herself into a seat next to Genji on the stop-blocks and shoved her goggles up onto her forehead with a huff, apparently not caring about the absolute mess they made of her hair as she did.

“So it seems we will be remaining in Hanamura for some time,” Zenyatta said calmly.

“Ages!” Lena lamented, slumping against Genji dramatically.

“What has happened cannot be changed,” Zenyatta said. “But I am sure that we all can find some project to keep us occupied in this unexpected windfall of time.” He inclined his head, and Genji was fairly certain that it was only his long acquaintance with the omnic monk that allowed him to detect the ever so faint slyness in his tone.

“I suppose we’re going to have’ta,” Lena sighed. “But I do worry about leaving the Junkers at the base so long with the Bastion when Jesse or I aren’t around.”

Genji dropped a hand on top of her head the way that he had seen Jesse do sometimes. “They will listen to Reinhardt,” he reassured her.

“I hope so,” she sighed. She leaned into the touch on her head for a moment, then hurtled to her feet. “Well, might as well get on the road, give the bad news to everyone,” she declared.

Zenyatta raised a hand. “I call ‘shotgun’,” he said, the air quotes clearly audible.

“Aw, no fair,” Tracer yelped.

Genji got up and followed the two to the van as Lena tried to wheedle the coveted passenger seat spot from Zenyatta’s grasp. Two weeks, or thereabout. Two weeks to find and convince his brother to join the Overwatch Recall, assuming he was still in Hanamura.

And if he was not, there were always other Shimada branch members to hunt, for other reasons. Perhaps, if Genji was especially lucky, one of the few remaining Clan Elders would poke their nose out of hiding with Hanzo’s yearly return over and the recent invasion of the Castle to be dealt with. It would be useful to cut some legs out from under the current leadership of the Clan, to increase the disruption in order to further delay any possible realization of just who had recently stolen from them.

Besides, he thought as he slid behind the wheel of the van, just because he had discovered that he had forgiven his brother for nearly killing him certainly didn’t mean he had forgiven anyone else in the Clan for their part in everything that had happened after their father had died. The Elders, especially the ones canny enough that he had not killed them yet, had a great deal that they still had to answer for in Genji’s books.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your easter egg reward for getting past the halfway point of the story: The majority of the fighting in Japan during the Omnic Crisis was much further south, but Shimada Castle sheltered the residents of Hanamura Old Town and the defense led by Hanzo’s and Genji’s grandfather prevented omnic forces from breaching the walls.


	7. Chapter Seven

**Chapter Seven**

  
Angela sighed as she loaded her purchases into the panniers of the scooter the team had rented alongside the bags from her previous stops that day. She still had two more stores to visit, and then she would finally have enough fresh fruit and vegetables.

She had not expected to spend her return to Hanamura driving from neighbourhood to neighbourhood buying supplies. However, the extension of their stay and her being the least immediately recognizable member of the team meant that several vaguely local shop-keepers were under the impression that she and a handful of nearly vegan, very hungry teenagers were currently visiting the area for the cherry blossoms.

Adult gorillas did need so much food, and a variety of it. Athena had confided to her that before sending out the Recall, Winston had lived on a diet that mostly consisted of bananas and peanut butter, with the occasional mineral supplement when he could be successfully nagged into it. Angela had practically felt the creeping malnutrition under her own skin.

Despite her mission to not see her friend and colleague collapse from a massive vitamin deficiency, the nearly daily shopping trip was tedious and time-consuming. Perhaps she should start bringing one of the others along, for the company. Zenyatta had expressed an interest in seeing more of the area, she remembered. And despite being as distinctive and recognizable as they were, Jesse and Genji persisted in sneaking out anyway, both alone or, worse, together.

Of course, she remembered as she started driving the scooter to her next stop, she had expected something like that from Genji. It was why she had insisted on being included in the Hanamura mission.

Genji had a tendency toward fighting in a very self-destructive way when it came to the Shimada, as if the damage he took didn’t matter so long as he won. She had fully expected him to die, back then. Fully three-quarters of the time he had spent in Japan after Blackwatch had started running their raids on the Shimada had been spent in Chiba, recovering and having his cybernetics rebuilt and repaired.

No matter how changed Genji appeared to be, Angela still doubted just how well his new-found philosophy of peace and acceptance could hold against fighting the Shimada Clan again. Especially when the timing, by necessity, also brought him back into contact with his older brother again for what she was certain was the first time since Hanzo had very nearly killed him.

She had seen the way he had fidgeted in her office, how he wouldn’t meet her or McCree’s eyes, and she had known that he had no intention of just watching his brother grieve this time.

And she had been right, she reminded herself as she went over the selection of vegetables available at her next to last stop. Though it was going to take time to coax the truth or at least the story of what had happened, the scoring on Genji’s armour and her having to give him emergency treatment for severe overheating said enough.

Angela had hoped that Jesse would help to keep Genji from slipping back into his older pattern from the Blackwatch days. He had influence with the renewed, more tranquil Genji who had joined the Recall, and the gunslinger had not appeared to like the way Genji came out of Hanamura raids back in those days either.

Instead — she thought with chagrin as she exercised her scant Japanese to prevent the shopkeeper’s compliments on her eye for freshness from distracting her from haggling the price down — McCree had been pulled into whatever Genji was getting up to. Both of them were sneaking in and out at all hours. And they weren’t always doing so together.

Despite knowing that both of them had spent nearly a decade alone after Overwatch had been shut down and that they had done a good enough job of looking after themselves in that time, Angela would feel much better about them skulking around Hanamura if she knew that they were watching each other’s backs, even if they were more likely to cause trouble that way. The Blackwatch raids had done much to de-fang the Shimada, but the Clan had never been completely brought down. Hanamura was still very dangerous, especially for former Blackwatch operatives.

As she carried her new armload of vegetables out to stow in the panniers of the scooter with the rest, Angela thought that she would give a great deal to know just what those two were getting up to on their frequent excursions.

*********

  
It was perhaps not a very good idea to go to a bar so close to Hanamura. Especially one that was practically only three steps away from the invisible line that marked the outermost edge of the current Shimada holdings. Hanzo could not bring himself to care.

His search for the impostor Genji was fruitless. Worse than fruitless. In the years since he had abandoned the Clan and Hanamura, all of the branch families had moved, and several had vanished. It was impossible to say whether the ones that had disappeared were in hiding or had been lost to the Overwatch raids, though the result was the same for him either way.

Of course the raids were also the most likely reason none of the family were still living in the places Hanzo remembered. Even so, he should have been able to track the movements of the remaining Clan members if the entire town had not been seething like a kicked ant’s nest from the attack on the Castle.

Watching as closely as he had been for the past handful of days, Hanzo knew that the culprits had not yet been caught. And with how pathetically reduced as the Clan had become, Hanzo was not surprised by their failure. Whoever was running the Shimada currently was obviously far more concerned with keeping whatever had happened from being found out by other _yakusa_ clans than in performing an exhaustive search.

His own failure to find the fake Genji was still galling, even under those circumstances. The imposter should have been easy to locate. With a fully awakened dragon, he would be incredibly precious to the Clan, especially since the chance of Hanzo giving them any heirs was close to zero.

So, logically, the man who had claimed to be Genji should have been in or near the Castle, the heart and stronghold of the Shimada’s remaining power.

Instead, he was nowhere to be found. And thanks to the increased security after the invasion it was entirely too difficult for Hanzo to get close enough to the Castle interior to sense him. The closest he had been able to get was regularly staking out at Ichiraku, which at least gave him a decent view of the comings and goings from the main gates of the Castle even though it had reawakened some long dormant cravings for pork bone broth with miso.

Genji had been the sensitive one, able to sense even unawakened branch family members at great distances, even though walls. Hanzo, on the other hand, awash in feedback from his own dragons, had barely managed to feel his own brother from across a room, and could only perceive an unawakened dragon from just barely over an arm’s length away.

Hanzo downed the half-pitcher of Sake he had left in one go and waved for another at the memory.

He had, of course, done what he could to hide the extent of his deficiency back when he lead the Clan, but that didn’t make his current failure or the thought of Genji — the real Genji — any easier.

He should leave. Leave Hanamura and never set foot there again. Let the Clan have their new dragon-lord figurehead and go. He had already lingered for too long.

Except that a teenage dragon would not remain a teen forever. Except that the Clan still felt like it was his, even though he had abandoned it long ago. Except he refused to turn his back on the affront, the utter gall of the attempt to use a facsimile of his dead brother — the brother he had killed himself — to entrap him.

His new order of Sake was intercepted part-way to him by a person in over-sized clothes that their body practically swam in, with a hood drawn up over their head. The person carried the tray to Hanzo’s table and set it down with mechanical hands before sitting down at his right hand.

“Hello Hanzo,” the fake Genji said in Japanese, pinning him with his dark eyes from under the edge of his hood, the bright green visor he had been so quick to replace the night of their battle before nowhere to be seen. “You don’t make yourself easy to find.”

Hanzo stalled, torn between reaching for a knife or the Sake, frozen by the sheer arrogance of a mere branch house member addressing him by his given name alone.

The fake Genji settled in his seat as if he expected to stay, apparently unperturbed by Hanzo’s lack of response. He reached for the new cup the bar had sent with the Sake and started playing with it, tipping it up and trying to balance it in various ways, making no move to remove the shaped metal plate covering the lower three-quarters of his face.

It was so much like Genji that it burned.

“I’m glad you didn’t leave Hanamura,” the man said after several attempts at balancing the cup on a fingertip and Hanzo’s not saying anything. “I’ve been hoping we could talk.”

He was seated at Hanzo’s right hand, the same as Genji ever had. He felt sharp, a cutting bitterness at the back of the throat.

Hanzo glared. “We could not possibly have anything to say to one another,” he snapped.

Genji had been steel and an aftertaste of sweetness, when he was close enough.

“You don’t mean that, I think,” the man said, “or you would not have spent the last few days so close to the Castle.” He leaned back a little, his eyes intent on Hanzo’s face. “You’re still angry with me.”

Hanzo reached for the Sake. “Do not presume to tell me how I am feeling.”

“So cold.” The man set the cup in his fingers spinning on the table as Hanzo poured. “Such a way to speak to your favourite brother.”

“Genji was my only brother,” Hanzo reminded him, then drained his cup of Sake in a single shot in an attempt to erase the sour, copper taste of having spoken his brother’s name. It didn’t work, and he reached for another refill.

The fake stopped the erratically spinning cup in front of him with one metal finger, never taking his narrowing eyes off of Hanzo.

“Was?” he said, his metallic voice remarkably expressive. “Didn’t we already have this conversation? I am not dead, brother, as you can see.” He waved his hand at himself in a sweeping gesture.

“What I see,” Hanzo said acidly, “is that another member of the Shimada than myself has an awakened dragon. My brother is dead. I killed him.” He drained his latest refill, and reached for the pitcher again.

The man moved, quick as a snake, to edge the Sake away from Hanzo’s grasp.

“I did not die, Hanzo,” he halfway snarled. “I came fucking close, and parts of me didn’t make it, but I lived.” He was flexing the hand that he didn’t have on the sake pitcher, opening and closing his fingers. “I was alive when you dropped your sword and fled the Grand Dojo.”

Hanzo stopped in his new reach for the Sake. It was not, he had thought, common knowledge within the Clan exactly what had happened the night that he had killed Genji. Even though by the time he had been able to bring himself to return to the Dojo the next morning, the body had been gone, the bloody tatami removed, and the damaged sword he had left on the floor had been cleaned and placed in the rack where it was still displayed to that day.

He had ordered that the damaged scroll be left up, but none of the other things.

Hanzo licked his lips and abandoned the Sake for the moment. “I left Genji bleeding out on that floor,” he said harshly. “Tell me, then, how he could have possibly survived.”

The man cocked his head like a bird, his dark, too-familiar eyes studying Hanzo. Then he straightened somewhat from his artful slouch, squaring his shoulders.

“The last thing I did before I passed out was to bring out my dragon,” he said, slowly and deliberately. “I don’t know why, but it felt important.” He picked up the Sake pitcher, his other hand still flexing. “Much of what happened after that is... fragmented, since part of me was unconscious the whole time.

“I bit the man who cut my throat,” he said, very matter-of-factly. “He died quickly, but the fire meant to burn my corpse was already burning by then.” He put the pitcher down as far from Hanzo as the table would allow. “The other man was shot.”

“By who?” Hanzo asked, unable to help himself.

The question earned him a quick flick of the man’s eyes, away then back again. “Blackwatch had watchers on the Castle,” he said. “When they realized that the supposed corpse two Shimada brothers were attempting to burn was me, they moved to retrieve me.”

“Blackwatch,” Hanzo repeated, remembering the name vaguely from the news many years ago, some connection to Overwatch that he had not cared about at the time. “Why would Blackwatch-” he cut himself off with a realization. “The name you would not give. The buyer.”

The cyborg inclined his head. An acknowledgement, though not quite an admission.

“I’m not quite sure what happened after the shot,” he said. “I hid in my clothes. I know they pulled me out of the fire, and I bit someone because they were trying to search me.

“It was only because I brought out my dragon that I survived long enough for the Blackwatch agents to get me to Mercy. She is the one who saved my life. I’m eternally indebted to her for it.”

There was a bright fondness to the way the man spoke of Mercy. In that moment, electronic voice and cybernetics aside, he was the most like the Genji of Hanzo’s memories that he had ever been so far.

“Mercy. I have heard that name,” Hanzo said thoughtfully.

“She is quite famous,” the cyborg said. “Though she hasn’t been in public very much since Overwatch was shut down.”

“Why?” Hanzo asked, thankful for the chance of a side-track to the conversation.

The man shrugged. “You’d have to ask her that,” he answered. “Supposedly, she was doing research at Oasis University, but given that she only ever answered my letters once or twice a year I doubt she was actually in residence.”

“Letters?” Hanzo asked, surprised. Letters were a formality the Clan reserved for only the most ceremonial occasions, things of careful, stilted language and phrasing that had been centuries old by the time Shimada Castle had been built.

Though Genji had always been proud of his penmanship, rightfully so. It had been so elegant, better than Hanzo’s own heavy hand.

“I often found myself in places with little connection, or insecure,” the cyborg explained. “Letters were easier.”

“So, this Mercy saved your life, and then you wandered?” Hanzo asked.

“Oh, no!” The cyborg laughed. “After my body was rebuilt, I worked for Blackwatch. I led the raids on the Clan. Sometimes, near the end, they would loan me to Overwatch.”

“The raids on the Shimada were your doing?” Hanzo demanded, aghast.

The man’s eyes narrowed again and his posture shifted, becoming something sharp and dangerous. “Just because I forgive you your part in what I have become does not mean I will ever forgive the Clan,” he said, dark and stone-heavy. “I will not be truly satisfied until you and I are the only Shimada who still walk the earth.”

It was hard, too hard, to continue to deny that this cyborg before him was truly Genji, with all that he had said. Hanzo couldn’t even blame the drink; the single pitcher and two further cups he had already drunk were not enough to impair him so much.

“You speak as if you have appointed yourself a spirit of vengeance,” Hanzo accused. “So arrogant.”

The cyborg relaxed again, sheathing his edge as he stretched his legs out to cross at the ankles and hooked an elbow over the back of his chair. “Are you going to try to claim that you left the Clan for no other reason than what happened between us that night?” he asked. “That nothing else they’ve done deserves any answer?”

That stung, for reasons that Hanzo refused to examine. “Obviously you feel differently,” he snapped, “given what you were doing.”

“I know my views,” came the infuriatingly calm answer. “I was asking for yours.”

Hanzo drew himself up. “How dare you? What gives you the right to demand such things?”

“I am your brother. And we have both abandoned the Clan. Why would I not wish to know?”

“You did so first,” Hanzo retorted sullenly. “Why did you?”

The only sign of a wince was in the brief hairbreadth of a moment that the cyborg’s eyes squinted shut. “Because I deserved more than to be the sword in your hand,” he said. “Because you deserved to be more than what they were making you into. Because after our father died I could finally see the rot at the core of the Clan that he had protected us from.” His voice was serious, and he did not look away from Hanzo’s face as he spoke. “That is why.”

Somehow Hanzo had not expected an answer despite asking for it. Nor would he have expected it to slide so easily between his ribs to punch the breath out of him.

It would have been better, easier, if the man who had to be Genji had refused to answer, or had evaded the demand. Hanzo wished that he had drunk more Sake before this conversation had begun.

The cyborg cocked his head, bird-like. “So, I’ve given you my reasons, brother,” he said. “Now it’s your turn.”

Hanzo had spent the years of his wandering very carefully thinking of no other reason for his having left the Clan than being the cause of his brother’s death. It was the only reason that he had allowed to matter, to have meaning.

He did not want to try to explain that to this sharp, bitter-tasting ghost sitting at his right hand where his brother should have stayed.

“Is it not enough that I left?” Hanzo asked.

“That is the most important part of it,” the man said, “but it’s unfair to demand my reasons without giving yours. I only want to know how much you’re carrying, brother.” He shifted, giving an almost-shrug. “Shared burdens are lessened.”

The last sentence were not Genji’s words, Hanzo thought. He had said them in a way that indicated that he had meant them, but someone else had put them in his mouth. If he still had a mouth under the metal plate that covered the entire lower portion of his face.

The memory was sudden, coming without warning.

“ _If you will not speak, then what use do you have for a tongue?_ ” Hanzo roared, bringing his sword up in a vicious underhand strike under Genji’s jaw.

Genji dodged, but not quite fast enough, slowed by his injuries and blood loss. The katana carved deep into his face, the deep chip in the blade from the blow that had utterly ruined both Genji’s sword and his right shoulder grating and then catching against his jawbone.

The sound Genji made was animal.

Hanzo choked, trapped in the remembered sensation from the hilt in his hands as the blade grated along bone, the way that Genji’s cheek had torn open nearly to his eye and his jaw had dislocated as Hanzo wrenched his sword loose. Blindly, he groped for the Sake pitcher, seeking to drown all thought.

It was closer than he had realized, and he very nearly knocked it over in grabbing for it.

Genji caught it as it wobbled, pinning it in place so that Hanzo couldn’t lift it.

“Hanzo?” he asked. “Are you alright? What happened, you-” he cut himself off, his gaze flicking around beyond Hanzo. “Something is wrong. There are too many people here, more than who came though the door.”

Hanzo stopped tugging on the Sake pitcher, though he didn’t let it go. “What?” he asked. He had not been paying enough attention since Genji had sat down, too distracted by the war between his sense and his emotion.

The bar was crowded, much more so than it had been before. And too many people were not holding drinks or waiting at the bar.

Genji’s eyes widened, a faint flicker coming and going in their depths.

“Shit,” he said. “They’re _family_.”

The way he said the word made it clear who he meant. Hanzo let go of the pitcher and straightened, his spine filling with solid iron. It had been many, many years since any Shimada had come after him themselves.

A handful of the drink-less newcomers were huddled together near the door, talking to each other in voices too low to hear over the jazz music the bar was playing, their expressions urgent. Something about their body language told him that they had not expected who or what they had found.

“We should not have talked here,” he sighed, shifting an elbow subtly to loosen one of his knives in its sheath. “It is too close to the town.”

“You are probably right,” Genji agreed, far too cheerfully for the situation. He flexed the fingers of his right hand, the points of star-shuriken just visible between the mechanical knuckles. “Especially when they’re currently so angry.”

The way he said it, his tone lighthearted and satisfied, caused a certain thought to cross Hanzo’s mind.

“You have something to do with that, don’t you,” he accused, glaring briefly at the cyborg before going back to watching the rest of the bar.

“Completely,” Genji agreed with satisfaction. “I’ll tell you about it next time.” He shifted in his seat.

“Next time?” Hanzo demanded, caught off guard. “Genji-”

He was too late. Before he had even finished saying the second syllable of his brother’s name, the cyborg was moving, exploding out of his seat with a feline pounce at a Shimada who had strayed too close even as he flicked a trio of shuriken into the throat of another man across the room.

The bar erupted into chaos, some scrambling to produce weapons, and others to get out of the way of what had abruptly become a battle.

Hanzo swore, mostly only internally, and pulled out his knife. Though Genji was still a sharp-edged bitterness sweeping through everything, the other Shimada were close enough to be an itch beneath his skin now that he was paying attention, unmistakable and uncomfortable.

The first man Genji had leapt on was dead, his face a red ruin. Genji was in the crowd somewhere, impossible to spot in the dark clothes he was wearing and the way that with every other breath a shuriken embedded itself in another light. The bar was getting darker by the heartbeat.

Despite having his knife out, Hanzo didn’t join the fight. Instead, he tried to make his way to the door, angered at himself for picking a table so far away from it. He was not the only one trying to get out, and he tried to stay low and blend in with the people simply trying to escape. His knife terrified them when they noticed it, making them jostle away and reveal him more than he liked, but he was not fool enough to put it away.

He turned to look back only once.

A shuriken, silver with the smallest flash of green, flew past his cheek and over his shoulder as he did. Someone behind him bit back an exclamation of pain. Hanzo didn’t hesitate, spinning in place and planting his fist in the face of the already bleeding Shimada there.

He punched with the hand holding the knife, and he felt rather than heard something crack and give under the blow. As the man fell back with a wet cry, Hanzo withdrew his hand, only slightly turned it, and plunged the blade into his throat at the artery. The knife was sharp, and went in easily.

Hanzo yanked the blade free and kept going without checking if the man was dead, wasting no time in resuming his escape. Back in the direction of the table where he and Genji had been sitting, the sounds of a fight intensified.

The Clan was greatly weakened, and he and Genji had been the best among them by a massive margin even before so many of their fighters had been killed or arrested in the raids that Hanzo now knew that Genji had led against them. There was no question who would win, especially with the armour Genji wore that made him look so mechanical that he undoubtedly had on under his baggy clothes.

Hanzo couldn’t be sure if Genji was fighting simply to fight or to give Hanzo a chance to slip away in the confusion. Once, so many years ago, he had thought that he knew his brother well enough to know. He had thought he knew his brother’s mind, but he had been so wrong then. He would not even venture to hazard the thought of a guess now. Especially when he realized that he could only barely speculate just how incredibly wrong he had been about so much of his brother.

Just as Hanzo reached the door, two of the people who had been part of the knot of discussion that he had noticed stepped into his way.

“Hanzo-sama,” one of them said.

Hanzo was tired, almost to the point of exhaustion. He had not slept well since the night of his and Genji’s confrontation, his dreams full of strange images and some great urgency that had made them far from restful, and his waking hours spent in fruitless searching for the man that he had battled. The abruptly interrupted conversation — if it could be called that — with Genji minutes ago had scraped all of his remaining patience and nerves raw and bloody.

Which was why, when that man looked at him with that expression of servitude the family had always worn for him as if he had ever wanted or requested it and said ‘Shimada-sama’ as if he had not abandoned the title, Hanzo saw red.

He flipped the already bloody knife in his grip and sank it hilt-deep into the liver of the one who had spoken, even as he lashed out with his foot at the other’s knee, forcing it to fold in the opposite direction than it was supposed to with a crackling crunch of cartilage that was clearly audible despite the noise of Genji’s part of the bar fight. Both of the Shimada members howled with pain. Hanzo wrenched his knife free with a gratuitous twist, grabbed the dying man by his belt, lifted him, and hurled him bodily into the other, who went down with another shriek. Uncaring, Hanzo drove down onto both of them together with both his knees and all of his mass, feeling something crack and shift under him even as he found his target and drove his knife in under the jaw of the one with the newly dislocated knee.

He was on his feet again moments later, knife still clutched in his white-knuckled hand as he all but dove through the door and out of the bar entirely.

A painfully obvious nondescript car had been pulled up as close to the door as possible, causing a backup of people as those escaping from the fight inside had to work their way around it, though strangely, there was no one keeping watch on the press of people as there should have been. Hanzo eyed the scuffle of a fight happening at the far edge of the parking lot from the bar, and concluded that the Shimada had not entirely thought through the idea of sending a rather large fighting force across their current borders into another’s territory when whoever had overheard he and Genji had called them.

All the better for him, really. Thankful that he had not parked his bike at the bar, Hanzo wiped off his knife and re-sheathed it, then quietly slipped away into the night. He would go on foot to his current hotel, he decided, then in the morning he would fetch his bike from the overnight parking where he had left it and change neighbourhoods again.

It was tempting to simply plan to drive away, to quit Japan entirely, he had to admit to himself as he skirted well around the fight between the Shimada and the current local gang — whatever it called itself. But Genji had said ‘next time’, and promised a story besides. Hanzo could not abandon that, it felt too much like a promise.

He had already abandoned enough promises for three lifetimes, he had no desire to add to the total.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now, a more lighthearted easter egg, to cleanse the palate: Back when he was a party boy, one of Genji’s favourite tricks was to balance a full shotglass on the end of a tanto balanced on his finger and then flip it into somebody’s palm (or cleavage) without spilling it.


	8. Chapter Eight

**Chapter Eight**

  
Despite his slight impatience, Genji was not displeased with the progress of carrying out his new plans for his brother. Even though it had been a few days since their conversation had been so rudely interrupted by the Shimada Clan and he hadn’t spoken to Hanzo since, just a handful of hours ago Genji had confirmed that at his brother was still in the general area, which was a very good sign.

And the interruption at the bar had come before the two of them had really started to get into arguing with each other, which in hindsight was really all for the better.

His fear had been, of course, that Hanzo would leave. He had been recognized by some of the Clan members at the bar, and despite Genji’s efforts some of them had survived. Not that Hanzo would know that most of them were dead, since he had left so quickly after Genji had started the fight. So, it had been a very real possibility that he would go back underground and vanish.

Sensing his brother as he had been leaving the city limits of Hanamura a few hours ago had thus been a great relief, even though Hanzo had apparently gotten his hands on a powerful car that had been quite difficult to keep up with on a scooter. Still, Genji had managed it, and had confirmed Hanzo was currently staying in a small motel just the next township over from the safehouse the Recall members were staying in, which was very lucky indeed.

So Genji was in a brilliantly good mood, one that even the slight worry brought on by Lena telling him that Zenyatta had gone out alone to wander the neighbourhood an hour or so ago and hadn’t come back yet couldn’t quite cloud.

Experience had taught him that the better his starting mood was the easier it was for him to deal with Winston and his apparently bottomless well of optimism, so as he had been driving back to the safehouse, Genji had decided to make an attempt to broach the idea of recruiting Hanzo into the Overwatch Recall to the ape. It would be better to settle the idea ahead of time, after all, rather than give Hanzo an opportunity to make an excuse to back out by making it a surprise to the nominal leader.

Winston had mainly been keeping himself occupied in the team’s unplanned extra time in the safehouse by puttering about the small medbay in the basement performing maintenance and repairs on the equipment, so Genji headed in that direction first.

“-in a ramen restaurant, really?” the gorilla’s deep voice drifted up the stairs as Genji started down them. “What were you even doing there?” he asked in an exasperated tone.

“Surveillance,” McCree’s unmistakable voice responded, sounding at ease. “Just puttin’ an eye or two on the Castle.”

Genji cocked his head in thought.

“Did something happen at Ichiraku?” he asked as he stepped into the medbay.

Winston turned to face him. “How-?”

“I heard you saying something about ramen and the Castle as I came down,” Genji explained. “And the only decent ramen restaurant near the Castle is Ichiraku.”

“Genji recommended the place to me,” McCree said from where he was comfortably leaning against one of the counters, wearing his usual cowboy gear, minus the boots. “And right good it was, too. Best ramen I’ve ever addressed, up until the shootin’ started.”

“Shooting?” Genji asked.

McCree sighed heavily. “Some damn fool burst into the place wavin’ a gun, well, what looked like a gun, an’ fixin’ t’rob the place when I was barely half done my bowl,” he complained. “Completely ruined the whole meal.”

“Because you shot him!” Winston scolded.

“An armed robbery?” Genji boggled aloud. “So close to Shimada Castle?”

“They’ve pulled in real close since we hit them,” McCree said. “I’m guessin’ the idiot thought it was a golden chance.”

“Engaging in a shootout is not something we planned for,” Winston added.

“Not like I planned to get in the middle o’ the stupidest attempted robbery this side o’ the world,” McCree snapped, sounding put-on enough that Genji was quite certain it wasn’t the first time the gorilla had thrown that particular accusation the cowboy’s way that evening.

“Where did the robber even get a gun?” Genji asked to deflect the argument. “None of the local Clans will sell locally.”

“Fake gun,” McCree answered, his tone sour. “Printed up on the cheap, then painted to look real. Broke into about a million pieces when I stomped on it.” A certain infliction to the gunslinger’s words told Genji that it hadn’t only been the gun that had been broken in that stomp.

“Regardless of that, the news is already reporting that you attempted to rob the restaurant,” Winston said, fussily adjusting his glasses. “By this time tomorrow, it will be all over the international news!”

“Yeah, that’s pretty much the way it usually goes when I get noticed doin’ anything,” McCree agreed. “Not much t’be done about that now.”

“If you hadn’t-” Winston started.

“What’d you’ve had me do then?” McCree interrupted, his tone dangerous. “Light outta there like a cat with its tail on fire like the one Shimada in the place when the robbery started?”

“How do you know it was a Shimada?” Genji asked, curious.

McCree waved a hand. “The family resemblance,” he drawled. “Hard to mistake brows like that ‘round here for any other blood.”

“This is going to be a PR nightmare for the Recall,” Winston lamented.

McCree adjusted his hat and frowned darkly. “Okay, one,” he stabbed up a forefinger, “the Recall ain’t got no P to R. An’ two,” his middle finger joined the pointer, “the membership of the Recall or that there’s even been a Recall ain’t even known of outside of some very particular instances.”

“Mostly only by our enemies,” Genji added helpfully. “And the Shambali, of course.”

“Precisely,” McCree agreed.

Winston had hunched into himself as McCree had made his points, and Genji’s addition had made him look outright miserable.

McCree looked over the ape, and his shoulders dropped too as the gunslinger took a deep breath, visibly pulling calmness over himself like putting on one of his serapes.

“Look, if’fn it means so much, there’s this blogger I’ve got a passin’ close acquaintance to,” the cowboy said. “He’s big in the news circles, and he’s been persuaded to be sympathetic to me before. I can get him t’put about my side o’ things maybe.”

Winston straightened a little, some of the misery leaving his expression. “A famous blogger?”

“Fella name of Morricone?” McCree said. “Had a new book out, oh, last year?” An expression like a cat with cream briefly crossed his face. “Hit the bestseller list within three days,” he added.

“Morricone?” Winston looked at McCree with something approaching awe. “You know Joel Morricone?”

McCree shrugged. “Passin’ acquaintance, like I said,” he answered. “He got his start talkin’ ‘bout me and my ilk, it was hard not to notice him.” He produced a toothpick and stuck it between his teeth, chewing on it lightly.

“If you can get Morricone to tell your version of events, it could certainly help,” Winston said, nodding. “Do you really think you can get him to do it?”

“I’m sure he can be persuaded,” McCree said. “Though if I want to beat the spread of the current version, I’d best get to typin’.” He pushed himself fully upright. “’Bout what time would it be in the US ‘round now?”

Genji ran a quick calculation through his internal computer with a few quick flicks of his fingers. “Between one and four in the morning, depending?” he offered.

“Well then, if I hop skip the blog post could catch the mornin’ news cycle,” McCree said, looking pleased.

“You really think he’d get the message in time for that?” Winston asked.

McCree made a sound like an aborted snort. “You think writers sleep on any sorta regular schedule?” he retorted. “Prolly won’t be sleepin’ for hours yet.”

“Ah, good, good,” Winston said, sounding relieved.

McCree started to head for the stairs, but then stopped, turning to Genji, who had sidled further into the room during the conversation. “Oh, did you come down lookin’ for me, darlin’?” he asked.

Genji shook his head. “No, I just thought I remembered there being some...” he paused, searching his mind for the right term in English, “...some of the... stuff.” He waved at his arm. “I found another scratch,” he lied. “From the other night.”

“Ah, filler.” The cowboy nodded. “Try the drawers with the gun kits,” he advised, then headed up the stairs.

Obediently, Genji went to rummage the drawers containing the various spare gun cleaning and maintenance kits still stored in the safehouse, listening as McCree very deliberately thumped his way loudly up the stairs. There were, he found, several tubes of the stuff, but it was all over a decade old, and the rich, deep black of Reyes’ shotguns as well. Of course. It would have been fine with his old armour, if it even still worked, but with his current silver shell it would be far too noticeable to use black, and ugly besides.

“I might have some in my maintenance bag,” Winston offered, apparently having noticed the harsh glare Genji was giving the packages he’d found. “Though why don’t you just buff it out? The scratch, I mean.”

Genji threw the tubes back into the drawer they had come from, and slammed it shut. “It is not safe enough here,” he said. “I will wait to do that until we get back to the base.”

“Oh, of course,” Winston said. “That makes sense.” He turned away, to the large case he had made for transporting his gun and a basic toolkit together, having considered them of equal importance on missions for as long as Genji had gone on them with him. “Let me see if I have anything that was restocked this decade.”

Genji fidgeted as the ape went through his case. Though he had come with the intention to talk to Winston about his brother, now that he was there he found himself at something of a loss how to bring up the topic.

“Ah, I knew I had some!” Winston declared, turning back to Genji with a tube of temporary filler in his hand, looking comically small between his huge fingers. “I’m afraid it’s matte white, though.”

“Better than black and twelve years old,” Genji said, and accepted the tube. He immediately stripped off the over-sized hoodie he had been wearing — his sixth favourite, since the bar fight had ended up ruining his fourth-most favoured one — and dropped it onto a counter before unclipping and removing his forearm plate without any concern for his company. It was nothing that Winston had not seen before, back when Genji had first started training with Lena.

Winston harrumphed uncomfortably anyway, and noticeably avoided looking at the naked mechanics of Genji’s exposed arm. Which was considerate, but unnecessary, given that it was still covered in a carbon-fibre mesh to keep the dust out, and looked mostly almost arm-like even without the armour covering it.

Keeping his head bent as if he was concentrating on rubbing the putty-like substance from the tube into the scratch on his armour plate, Genji took the plunge.

“I... discovered something,” he started. “On one of my trips out.”

“Oh?” Winston said.

“Yes,” Genji answered. “This is... I mean,” he fumbled, stopped, then started again. “I discovered that my brother is in the area.”

“Your brother?” Winston asked. “The one with the bounty you showed us?”

“I only have one brother,” Genji said, staring at his hands as he smoothed the paste into the scratch in his armour. “He left the Clan, not so long after... what happened to me.”

“I remember you mentioning that,” Winston agreed. “But then, what is he doing here?”

Genji waited the space of a few breaths, his hands still on his armour plate. “It is close to the time when I... when it happened,” he said at last, when he was more certain of his voice. “I am supposed to have died.” He reached for a cloth convulsively, clutching it tight. “It... It turns out that he returns each year. To... commemorate.”

There was a painfully awkward silence as Genji scrubbed the paste off of his fingertips with harsh movements.

“Um, so, ah,” Winston started, only increasing the awkwardness, “what... er, I mean..”

“I was thinking I might recruit him,” Genji said, rescuing the ape.

“Recruit him?” Winston repeated with complete surprise colouring his voice. “To Overwatch? Genji...” He trailed off, and out of the corner of his eyes Genji saw him gesturing futilely, searching for words.

“I remember,” Genji said into the break, “Both McCree and Tracer wishing to have a sniper along on this mission. And Reinhardt wishes so as well on missions, sometimes.” He stared down at the patch of white on the armour plate in his lap, the filler still not dried enough to put the piece back on. “My brother is an archer, one of very great skill. He could be our Hawk.”

“Oh?” Winston leaned back a little, blinking. “An archer? Certainly, this mission isn’t the first one that the need for a sniper has been brought up, but something so old-fashioned as a bow and arrow... How useful could that be?”

“Just because he does not use a rifle does not mean he could not be a good Hawk for us,” Genji argued. “His aim is perfect, and he climbs as well as I do. And he has a good mind for battle. I could always rely on him at my back.” Always, until the night he could not. “He would be valuable. To the Recall.”

“Hmm.” Winston rubbed his chin. “You make a good argument for him.” He took off his glasses, polishing a lens delicately between his thumb and forefinger. “Do you really think he would be willing to join?”

He had him, Genji realized.

“I can convince him,” Genji promised with new confidence.

Winston put his glasses back on. “Well then,” he said, “I see no real reason why we shouldn’t give it- I mean him, a try.”

“Thank you,” Genji said with sincerity. “I am certain he will not disappoint.”

Hanzo’s pride would not let him be anything less than perfect, so it was an easy promise to make.

Now all that was left to Genji’s plan was to arrange for there to be another meeting with Hanzo before the team left, and to convince his brother by whatever means necessary to join the Recall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would just like to remind everyone, for the record, that McCree is a liar.
> 
> Your easter egg for this chapter: Winston ran out of things to fix in the basement two days after the Shimada Castle mission. Now he’s lurking down there because he can’t figure out what else to do.


	9. Chapter Nine

**Chapter Nine**

  
Lena liked to run. The bounding stride of it, the wind in her hair, the speed that didn’t come from bending reality to get it. She tried, very hard, to make time for it every day. For the duration of the team’s extension of their stay in Hanamura, she had kept up the habit, only missing once so far, when the rain had simply been too much one day.

Normally, for safety, she would borrow the scooter and drive far out of town to run along the farm roads where there weren’t as many people out to see her. But that day Genji had gotten to the scooter first and when she’d texted him asking when he’d be back he had just sent back a shrug emoji, so she’d tossed on a jacket that was big enough to be zipped closed over the chronal accelerator, and gone to run the streets of the neighbourhood instead.

It was, on the whole, a nice little town. A bit of traffic here and there, but few other pedestrians to avoid running into, at least at that hour of the afternoon, even when Lena took a corner that proved to be into a shopping district of sorts, with a variety of different stores lining either side of the street, with no visible pattern to the placement of what goods were sold where.

Lena ran along, glancing curiously from store window to store window as she went, until one particular display crammed in between an electronics shop and a butcher’s caught the entirety of her attention. She stopped dead in front of it with wide eyes, then hastily pulled out her phone before dipping into another pocket for the tiny pachimari keychain she had started taking with her everywhere.

Looping the keychain over her finger, she took a selfie with the display behind her, holding up her free hand in a v-sign at the bottom of the shot, the miniature pachi dangling against her palm, being careful to angle the camera so that there wouldn’t be any glare off of the window glass behind her. Then she checked the time, did a few mental calculations, and grinned triumphantly.

[[ **look hwat i found** ]] she texted to Emily, and then sent the selfie that she’d just taken, noticing that she was grinning like a fool in it only after she had hit ‘send’.

Emily always took a bit to look at her texts, not ever wanting to interrupt herself to do it, and it was her personal practise hours besides so she wouldn’t even know she got a text until the end of a movement at least, so Lena gave her coin-sized pachimari a squeeze, smiling at its peep of a squeak before tucking it away again and resuming her run.

She had made it to the end of the street and had just turned to run back again when her phone chimed at her three quick times in succession. Still jogging, though slower, Lena got it out and checked the messages.

[[ **OH** ]] [[ **MY** ]] [[ **GOD** ]]

Lena smiled fondly at the texts, practically hearing Emily’s voice exclaiming the words in her plummy Cardiff accent.

[[ **i’m getting it** ]] she texted back. [[ **payback!** ]]

Emily must have still been holding her phone, because her response came chiming in almost immediately.

[[ **YOU MUST** ]] [[ **VID OF HIM SEEING IT** ]] [[ **OR I WILL NOT FORGIVE** ]]

Still jogging along to the store, Lena snapped another quick selfie of her saluting the camera and sent it as her response.

She was rewarded a few minutes later as she was entering the store with a shot of Emily making a kissy face at their bathroom mirror, wearing just one of Lena’s shirts — the buttons straining over her breasts, panties, and nothing else, with a big red patch on her jaw from her violin, making the loony grin spread across Lena’s face again when she saw it. She had the best girlfriend in the world.

*********

  
Hanzo had lost track of how many times he had considered simply leaving Hanamura and never returning again several days ago. He had caught himself packing to leave for the third time just that morning.

But Genji was here. Genji alive, and not dead by Hanzo’s own hands. Alive, not a fake or a ghost but alive, even if his cybernetics were distressingly extensive.

“ _Hanzo, look after your brother,_ ” the memory of his mother gave her last order to him.

He could not leave.

He could barely stand to stay.

It took a long time, far too long, for him to notice that the sharp bitterness growing at the back of his tongue was not from his own choking regret.

“I think it’s concerning that the only times you stay in one place for any length of time are when you’re either sleeping or drinking,” Genji said in his same, informal Japanese in his new, metal-toned voice as he seated himself next to Hanzo, his back to the sky and sheer drop that Hanzo faced.

Hanzo’s hands clenched on the mostly empty bottle of _sochu_ he held. “It’s not safe to stay still for long,” he said, his voice coarse and rough as he gave the excuse.

Genji was in baggy pants but shirtless, his armoured silver torso shining in the sun, and he was wearing the green-lit visor and helmet that he had for their fight again, yet Hanzo could still clearly feel the sidelong look his brother gave him. “And getting drunk alone on a rooftop is so much safer, of course.”

Hanzo flexed his feet, digging the climbing spikes on the underside of the toe section into the concrete wall. “You’re one to talk,” he retorted haughtily before he thought, then cringed at how easily he had slipped into old habits. He didn’t even know if Genji drank any more, if he even could drink anymore. Hanzo had not yet seen him take off the shaped plate that covered the entirety of his lower face, had no idea if he could.

The visceral, tactile memory of tearing Genji’s jaw off heaved into his consciousness, and Hanzo lifted the bottle of _sochu_ and gulped at it, trying to drive the sensation away.

“Bite your tongue,” Genji answered. “I never got drunk or high alone in my life.”

Hanzo considered the statement, and had to acknowledge the truth of it. Genji, after all, had never lacked for companionship, at home or when he was out. Admittedly, some of that company had been those assigned to watch over him, but many had not, and he had not been as burdened with bodyguards as Hanzo had been in any case — at least, not until their father died. Genji’s partying habits had been well ingrained by then.

He glanced over at Genji, and the bright green light of his visor caught his eye again. “Why are you wearing that?” he asked. “That...” he gestured toward his own face, “the mask?”

Genji’s head turned to face him. “It’s rather bright this afternoon,” he said lightly, “and I find sunglasses impossible to wear anymore.” He paused, letting Hanzo squirm on that hook, his head cocked like a bird. “It also provides many useful heads-up displays when I’m in battle,” he added.

“Do you... often find yourself in battle?” Hanzo found himself asking.

“Often enough.” Genji shrugged. “Although, that does bring up something I was hoping to talk to you about.”

Hanzo stiffened involuntarily. “I will not fight you,” he growled. “Not again.”

Never again, he had sworn to himself, white-hot and fervent, the night after the brawl and his bloody scramble of an escape from the bar. Genji would never again face a fight to the death at his hands. A third time would destroy them both utterly, no matter which one was the victor.

“What? No!” Genji exclaimed. “I meant to say I want us to fight together, not against each other!”

“Together? What do you mean by ‘together’?” Hanzo demanded. “If there is some enemy you fear to face alone...” He didn’t realize how protectively threatening he sounded until Genji laughed.

“No, brother, nothing like that,” Genji assured him. Hooking his hands on the edge of the low parapet they were both sitting on, he leaned back, his visor pointed up toward the sky. “You remember, I told you I was with Blackwatch?”

“Until it was shut down, yes,” Hanzo confirmed. “Then you were with Overwatch, I think, for a time.”

He had done some research, after their talk in the bar, refreshing himself on what had been at the time it was occurring mere tertiary concerns not worth paying any more than vague, passing attention to. There had been a remarkable amount of information still available online, much more than Hanzo had expected there to be given that the main events of the shutdown of first Blackwatch and then Overwatch had been so many years ago.

It had been something of a stunning revelation.

Realizing that the swift, mostly metal figure sliding in and out of many of the surviving shots of the mission footage that had exposed the existence of Blackwatch to the world had, in fact, been his brother. Finding a similarly blurred picture of Genji with the shining, winged figure of an angel bent over him in the background of a picture in an article chronicling the arrest of Doomfist some two or three years after had been a welcome surprise after that footage.

It would have been so easy for Overwatch to have abandoned Genji after the shutdown of Blackwatch. It had been a relief to see proof that they had not.

“I was loaned to Overwatch from time to time,” Genji said. “I worked well alongside some of their more special agents. But I stayed with Blackwatch the whole time.”

“Wasn’t Blackwatch shut down years before Overwatch was?” Hanzo asked, surprised.

Genji shrugged theatrically. “I believe the term used was ‘ _official suspension_ ’,” he said, briefly switching to English for the two words. “But we never actually stopped running missions.”

Hanzo considered that. “Why bring it up now?” he ended up asking. “There hasn’t been any Blackwatch or Overwatch for many years.”

“Well.” Genji shifted. “That’s not strictly true anymore.”

Hanzo snapped his head to the side to pierce Genji with a glare, as much as he could get past the man’s visor. “What do you mean ‘anymore’?” he demanded.

Genji went back to staring up at the sky, apparently completely unaffected by the intensity of the gaze Hanzo had turned on him. “Overwatch has been started up again,” he said, “secretly. I’ve... well, I’m with them now.” He turned his head at last to look at Hanzo. “I’d like you to join us.”

“What?” Hanzo barked in shock, very nearly dropping the bottle of _sochu_ in his surprise. “You must be joking.”

“I wouldn’t joke about such a thing.” Genji finally turned to look at him again. “Why would you think that?”

“You must be joking because you cannot possibly want the man who murdered you on your team.” Hanzo snapped.

Genji made a strange noise, an almost sibilant keen of static. “I’m not dead, Hanzo.”

Hanzo looked away and took another gulp of _sochu_ from the bottle. There wasn’t much left in it, and he regretted not bringing another.

“Then you must have misspoken,” he insisted stubbornly.

“Did I stutter?” Genji asked, making Hanzo wonder if his obviously artificial voice-box that almost sounded like he used to before he was butchered was even capable of stuttering. “I want you to join the Overwatch Recall with me. I can’t be clearer than that.”

“You could not possibly-” Hanzo broke off under the unblinking stare of the visor of Genji’s helmet. “Why?” he demanded.

Genji tilted his head to the side, bird-like, and paused before he answered.

“The team needs a sniper,” he said, “so, of course I thought of you.”

Hanzo sucked down the last of the _sochu_ in the bottle. The answer Genji had given tasted too much like flattery, and not enough like the truth.

“Don’t give me that look,” Genji said. “Though I will admit I also had a more personal reason to put you forward for it.”

“And that would be?” Hanzo prodded when Genji seemed disinclined to continue.

“Do you remember,” Genji asked, “when we were boys?” His voice was wistful and far away. “When we could actually spend time together and fucking talk to each other without it turning into an argument?”

Hanzo clutched the empty _sochu_ bottle tightly to his chest. “That was a long time ago,” he managed to choke out somehow.

It had been an eternity ago, when things had been so amiable between them. So long ago, before either of their dragons had awakened, before Genji had started on his path of endless parties, cocktails, drugs, and lovers, before their father had died.

“ _Look after your brother._ ”

“Those days are gone,” Hanzo said, his shoulders curling in around the bottle.

“Well, I want them back again.”

Hanzo’s memory supplied him with a mental image of a far younger Genji, his jaw set stubbornly and his lips drawn up into a petulant pout.

“Impossible,” Hanzo said to the unwelcome image. “We are not children any more.”

“True, we’re not,” Genji agreed. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t be like that again.” He turned on the parapet, swinging one leg over so that he straddled it, facing Hanzo fully. “Brother, we’re free, both of us. The Clan can’t dictate what or who we are to each other ever again. We can- We can rebuild, start over, whatever! We just need time and the will to do it.” Both hands braced between his legs, he leaned in, toward Hanzo, the words spilling from him in a rush.

“Think what you’re saying,” Hanzo protested. “You cannot possibly-”

“Both of us being in the Recall could give us that time,” Genji broke in, almost as if he hadn’t spoken.

With exaggerated care, Hanzo put down the empty _sochu_ bottle. Then he pressed both hands to his face. “Genji...” he said, muffled into his palms.

“All I want from you is to have my brother back,” Genji said, sealing Hanzo’s fate. “Surely that can’t be too much to ask.”

Hanzo left his hands over his face, tasting the bitterness of Genji’s victory strike.

“Hanzo,” Genji said beside him, his tone still persuasive, as if he had not already won, “brother...”

“Stop,” Hanzo ordered. With an effort, he dragged his hands away from his face. “Fine, enough. I will join your- this ‘recall’. You need not pester me further about it.”

“And you will try?” Genji asked. “To be brothers — just brothers — to each other again?”

Hanzo sighed. “Yes, I will try,” he promised.

It wasn’t as if Genji was entirely wrong, after all. It had been the Clan elders who had driven the wedge in between them, even if it had been Genji’s own behaviour that had offered the first crack. For that matter, without the Clan to be dishonoured by it, Genji could no longer even be said to be behaving shamefully, so long as he was staying true to his ethics.

“I’m so glad,” Genji said, a wealth of emotions in his voice. “Thank you for agreeing to try, brother.” Then, suddenly, he was in motion, swinging his leg back over the parapet and hopping to his feet on the roof. “Well,” he said with a metallic clap of his hands, “we should get moving before it gets late.”

“Get moving?” Hanzo asked dully. “Get moving where?” Even as he spoke he found himself turning so that he could stand up as well, keeping himself on the same level as his brother.

“To the Recall safehouse, of course,” Genji said in a matter-of-fact tone. Something must have shown on Hanzo’s face at that, because Genji rolled his shoulders and moved his head in a way that somehow perfectly conveyed a full eye-roll. “You think that now you’ve agreed I’m going to let you out of my sight before you talk to the Recall’s leader and tell him you’re joining?” he asked, and pointed at Hanzo. “I’m not going to give you a chance to think of a way out or how to put it off, you know.”

It was astonishing, Hanzo decided, just how much Genji had changed somehow without changing very much at all.

“Come on,” Genji went on when Hanzo said nothing. “Let’s go get your things.” He headed off over the roof. “I parked over this way.”

“You drove?” Hanzo asked, following him as the cyborg slung himself over the parapet.

Genji popped back up over the edge of the roof. “The safehouse is in another township,” he said. “Too far to walk here from.” Then he was gone again.

Hanzo rolled his shoulders then scaled down the side of the building as well. On the ground, he found himself in a through-way between buildings, with Genji standing next to a small rental scooter pulling something out of its large pannier compartments. Genji snapped the compartment shut, shook the thing out a little causing it to resolve into clothing from a mere bundle of cloth, then pulled it over his head, squirming into the oversized hoodie with care for the various pointy bits that adorned his head and torso.

Watching him pull the shirt on, Hanzo was suddenly struck by a terrible realization.

“Were you _naked_ when we fought?” he demanded, appalled at the very idea.

“What? No. Of course not.” Genji finished pulling his head through the hoodie, and plucked at the shoulders to settle it properly over the vents there.

“You weren’t wearing any clothes,” Hanzo insisted stubbornly.

Genji made a rude noise of static that he had to have learned from some omnic. “I was completely covered, Hanzo,” he said, grabbing the scooter and starting to walk it out of the lane. “In armour.”

Hanzo followed him, frowning. “Still,” he protested. “You were-”

Genji made another of his full-body eyeroll gestures. “You didn’t cut my dick off,” he said bluntly. “If my dick isn’t out, I couldn’t possibly have been naked.”

“Uncouth.” The word slipped from Hanzo’s lips almost without his conscious direction.

Genji laughed, shoulders shaking, as he turned unerringly in the direction of the hotel that Hanzo was staying at. “You’re the one who won’t let go of the idea that I would be stupid enough to choose to fight naked.” His tone was light and full of amusement.

“That is not-” Hanzo protested.

“Will my scooter fit in your car with your stuff?” Genji interrupted.

“My... What? No,” Hanzo spluttered, his train of thought thoroughly derailed by the question. “Absolutely not.”

“Oh, pity.” Genji swung the scooter into the hotel’s courier parking and put the kickstand back down. “You’re going to hate following this slow little thing all the way there.”

Hanzo crossed his arms, frowning. “Genji...”

“Stop.” Genji spun around on his heel to face him. “I already told you, I’m not giving you a chance to wiggle out of this. And don’t try to tell me this isn’t your hotel either. I know it’s where you’re staying.” He mirrored Hanzo’s pose back at him.

Hanzo pressed a hand over his eyes, feeling the balls of the barbel in his bridge piercing against his palm. “Genji-”

“Congratulations on doing your depressed manga-style brooding on the roof of a different building than the one you sleep in, by the way,” Genji added.

Releasing the sigh caught behind his teeth as a hiss of air instead, Hanzo dropped his hand. “Fine,” he conceded with as much grace as he could muster under the circumstances, “let us go retrieve my belongings.”

“You get so formal when you’re annoyed.” Genji waved at the door of the hotel. “Lead the way, brother.”

It was pointless to argue further. Hanzo led the way to his room. There was little to pack — he always made sure to leave nothing in a room that he couldn’t abandon there without regret, just in case. It was only a matter of a few minutes’ work to gather it all, then he wiped any fingerprints he might have left off of the room keycard and left it on the dresser.

Genji hung the ‘do not disturb’ sign on the door as they left. It was a good touch: the room was paid up for the next few days, so by the time Hanzo’s absence was noticed it would be difficult to tell how long he had been gone for.

Accordingly, Hanzo led the way down to the parking garage by a route that avoided the majority of the security cameras.

Genji surveyed the parking garage. “Which car is yours?”

“There is no car,” Hanzo said with a sharp shake of his head as he headed for the bike cages.

“A bike, really?” Genji asked, his tone dubious. “Don’t tell me you’ve been pedalling-”

Fishing out his key, Hanzo unlocked the cage containing his bike, causing Genji to abruptly cut off his words and make a small pained noise.

“A motorbike?” Genji said, sounding oddly upset as Hanzo wheeled his blue and black Honda out of the enclosure. “But I thought that after-”

“It was Father and the council’s decision to forbid motorbikes after my accident, not mine,” Hanzo snapped, cutting him off.

“Accident? The Karasu ran you off the fucking road! You almost died!”

Hanzo retrieved his chain lock from the bike cage and rolled it up with a calm he didn’t feel. “Rival families no longer have a reason to attack me,” he pointed out. “And no one in the Clan would think to look for me driving a bike.”

It had not been easy, at first. His first drive on his bike after leaving the Clan had been cut embarrassingly short by an abrupt, inexplicable shortness of breath, leaving Hanzo feeling strange and unbalanced even after it had passed. So many years had passed since the event, and yet the act of seating himself and grasping the handlebars had instantly brought back the sensory memory of the ‘accident’, the loss of control, the feeling of the previously unimaginable pain in his lower legs and along his right side, the taste of blood and vomit in his mouth, as if it had only just happened the month before.

Hanzo had persisted, however, determined to take back another decision the Clan had made for him. By the time that he had started returning to Shimada Castle for the anniversary of Genji’s death, he had managed to put the memories away — for the most part. He still had his bad moments on wet roads if the bike slid, but otherwise it was much the same as driving had been before the night of the Karasu attack on him.

Genji tilted his head down, his shoulders and fingers shifting, tightening and curved. The omnic version of a frown. “I have to admit that makes sense,” he said slowly. “And I am terribly envious, considering that all I have is a rental scooter.”

“I saw,” Hanzo reminded him dryly as he stowed the lock chain and the bag he had brought down from his room in the bike’s storage.

Genji circled the bike. “You’re still going to hate following the slow thing,” he said, sounding remarkably cheerful all of a sudden. “This bike looks pretty fast, for a Honda.”

“Fast enough,” Hanzo agreed as he wheeled the motorbike out of the garage.

“We could trade,” Genji wheedled.

“Not a chance.” Hanzo snorted. “Better to drive slowly, following, than to be constantly trying to catch up.” Besides which, he had utterly no intention of allowing anyone, even his brother, to ever drive his only method of transportation, especially when it was currently carrying all of his physical possessions.

“Be that way then.” Genji once again led the way around the building to where his scooter was parked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The easter egg for this chapter: Lena accidentally turned off autocorrect in her phone fifteen minutes after first getting it and has since nearly forgotten that it exists.


	10. Chapter Ten

**Chapter Ten**

  
It was indeed a long, slow drive to the safehouse Genji was leading Hanzo to, only slightly improved by their being able to travel most of the distance side-by-side. Eventually though, Genji drew to a stop outside the gates of a large, walled-off property. Nothing that came anywhere near matching the size or grandeur of Shimada Castle, of course, but close to the sorts of places branch house members had lived in before the raids on the Clan. Hanzo drew to a stop as well, and regarded the sturdy gates dubiously.

“ _Here?_ ” he asked in Japanese, not having expected an almost-mansion when Genji had said ‘safehouse’.

“ _Here,_ ” Genji affirmed with a sharp nod, pulling his scooter over at the entry keypad and entering a code with a swift flicker of his fingers.

The gates rolled open with a quietness that spoke of good maintenance, and Genji drove though. Hanzo followed him in, consciously suppressing the instinct that cried out that he was being trapped as the gates shut again behind them.

“ _Park over there,_ ” Genji called, waving at a pull-over in the driveway where a large nondescript van that seemed vaguely familiar was sitting.

There was more than enough space beside the van for both Hanzo’s motorbike and the scooter Genji was driving to park and share one of the two remaining charge mounts there.

“ _What is this place?_ ” Hanzo asked as he connected his bike and retrieved his hotel bag.

“ _An old Blackwatch safehouse, I told you._ ” Genji shrugged. “ _But when we’re not using it for that, Athena runs it as an air b’n’b, apparently. A pretty popular one, from what she says._ ”

“Athena?” Hanzo repeated as they headed for the house.

Genji slanted a look back at him over his shoulder. “ _The base computer,_ ” he said. “ _Think of her as an extremely fancy digital assistant. That’s what I do._ ” He waved a hand. “ _Oh, and we mostly call her ‘Tena, on base. She responds to hearing her full name._ ”

“ _I... see,_ ” Hanzo said, although he was fairly certain he was missing something, or that Genji’s explanation was.

The front door opened into a traditional Japanese entranceway, a welcome, familiar comfort. Genji immediately headed over to a bin next to the nearly empty shoe rack and pulled out a towel. With efficient, practised motions, he swept the towel under and over each of his feet, wiping the metal clean before he stepped up onto the _tatami_. As he finished, he bent to pull another towel from the bin before dropping the used one back in.

“ _Here,_ ” he said, holding out the fresh towel to Hanzo. “ _For your feet._ ”

If Hanzo had needed any other proof that this was indeed where Genji was staying, that was it. He took the towel, which turned out to be pleasantly damp without being drippy, and sat down on the step to clean off the dirt of the street from his own feet, far less efficiently than Genji had done.

As Hanzo carefully worked the damp towel around and over the gripping surfaces on the bottom of his feet, Genji threw back his hood and reached to the back of his head. With a series of clicks and a very faint hiss, he disconnected and pulled off first the front visor portion of his helmet, and then with a few more button presses he also removed the top portion.

Holding the two pieces of his helmet in one hand, Genji ruffled the other through his bright, acid-green hair to resettle it from having been confined before he fished a drawstring bag out of one of the pockets of his pants. He put the helmet pieces in the bag, and slung it over his shoulder.

“ _Aren’t you going to take off the rest?_ ” Hanzo asked, hoping that maybe Genji hadn’t noticed him staring.

Genji tilted his head, bird-like. “ _The rest doesn’t come off,_ ” he said easily, his tone even. “ _This,_ ” he tapped the thick metal band that passed over his forehead just over his eyebrows, “ _is part of my_ neural-optical implant.” The technical words passed over his tongue with the ease of repetition. “ _And this..._ ” he touched the plate that covered his entire lower face from the bridge of his nose downward, “ _well, mostly I need it to breathe, and because..._ ” he shifted from foot to foot, his shoulders rising in a half-shrug before he forced them down again, “ _well, I don’t really have a lower jaw anymore,_ ” he said finally. “ _And the rest is for running my cybernetics, mostly,_ ” he added, his words tumbling in a rush.

The broken notch on Hanzo’s sword catching on Genji’s jawbone reverberated through Hanzo’s arms again. His hands spasmed, and he dropped the towel he had still been holding.

“ _Genji- I-_ ” he started wretchedly.

“ _No. Stop._ ” Genji’s voice rang with command that Hanzo had rarely ever heard from him before. “ _We must... We cannot put what happened behind us, I know. But we must move beyond it. And we can’t if you only try to apologize every time the subject comes up._ ”

There was a kind of sense in Genji’s spill of words, even though there was also a cruelty to them. Hanzo snapped his mouth shut on what he had been about to say.

Genji tilted his head, the corners of his eyes crinkling as Hanzo picked up the towel he had dropped and finished cleaning off his feet.

As Hanzo carefully folded the towel and put it back into the bin it had come from, Genji turned to the inner door of the entranceway and slid it open.

“Angela!” he said happily, all but bounding into the next room. “I did not expect you to be here!” he went on enthusiastically in English.

“I couldn’t go shopping with the scooter gone, Genji,” a woman’s voice, soprano with a noticeable Germanic accent replied as Hanzo made his way to the door. “What took you so long?”

“Ah, sorry,” Genji apologized. “I was... Angela, my brother is here.”

He sounded excited by the news he was giving, Hanzo thought as he stepped through the door.

Genji was over by a dark-coloured sofa not far from the door, bent over to press the metal mask that covered his lower face to the upturned cheek of a pretty, blonde, western woman who was seated there, a tablet in her hand and a blanket spread across her lap.

“He has come to join us,” Genji said as he straightened up.

The woman turned brilliant blue eyes rimmed in thick lashes to Hanzo. “Has he?” she murmured.

There was something oddly almost recognizable about those eyes, her narrow chin and high cheekbones that Hanzo couldn’t quite place in his memory despite his excellent recall of faces. “Greetings,” he said stiffly, stepping fully into the room and closing the screen door behind him. It was heavier and more solid than it should have been, steel disguised as wood beneath his hand. Most likely there was solid metal beneath the paper panels of the screen as well. Far more secure than appearances would make it seem.

“Angela, this is my brother, Hanzo,” Genji said, resting his hand lightly on the woman’s shoulder. “Hanzo, this is Doctor Ziegler. She is the one who saved my life back then.”

Hanzo’s eyes went wide, and he bowed deeply to the woman. “I owe you a great debt, Ziegler-sensei,” he managed, “on behalf of my brother.”

Doctor Ziegler regarded him for a long moment. “I do not rest on such formalities anymore,” she said, and smiled. The expression did not touch her eyes at all, as empty of feeling as looking at a doll, somehow making her more familiar. “You may call me Mercy, if you are going to be staying.” There was no welcome in her tone. She tilted a look up at Genji. “Are you certain?” she asked him. “Bringing him here...” She pursed her lips and Hanzo felt a nearly physical chill sweep over his soul.

“I would not have recruited him if I did not want him near,” Genji said. The hand not on Mercy’s shoulder flexed. “I have already spoken to Winston about it.”

Mercy took a deep breath, and shook her head slightly. “And Jesse?” she asked. “Did you speak to him about it?”

Genji’s shoulders slumped slightly, making Hanzo wonder about this ‘Jesse’ and their place in matters.

“Noooo...” Genji admitted with obvious reluctance.

Mercy gave him a severe look. “You know he’s not going to be happy about you going around him though Winston like this,” she said.

“I know,” Genji agreed. “But you know how he is. He will not agree with what I want to do with this.”

“And what is it that you’re wanting to do?” she asked.

Hanzo stepped further into the room. “My brother says he wishes for a reconciliation between us,” he said, answering before Genji could, “and that it will be best accomplished if I join this organization with him.”

“Hmm.” Mercy regarded him closely. “And you?” she asked. “Do you agree with him?”

Hanzo looked from her to Genji and back again. “If this is the atonement demanded for my mistakes then I will give it all that I have,” he said.

Mercy continued to regard him, her face thoughtful. “Very well,” she said after some time, then turned back to Genji. “Winston is most likely in the basement,” she said. “And Lena is about the house somewhere. Zenyatta and Jesse are out. Not together,” she added.

Genji nodded. “Thank you, Angela.”

She narrowed her eyes at him slightly. “Tell Jesse about this,” she said. “Before he gets back. He will be angry if you are not the first one to tell him.”

“Ah, yes,” Genji agreed, “I will.”

“Go on then.” Mercy waved them further into the house with her tablet. As Hanzo walked past her toward the room’s other door, she shot him a look like a knife. “We will talk,” she said to him, “about this great debt you owe me. Later.” Her voice was cool and sweet, immeasurably dangerous.

“I- yes, if that is what you wish,” Hanzo responded.

“Hmm,” was all she said as she waved him on again.

It was not easy to put his back to her after that.

“ _That went well,_ ” Genji said in Japanese when they were a little ways down the hall away, sounding like he actually meant it.

Hanzo choked on an inhaled breath. “ _Went well?_ ” he spluttered. “ _She- That woman hated me! I was lucky she didn’t shoot me where I stood!_ ”

Genji shrugged. “ _Probably not,_ ” he said, failing to deny the gun that had been hidden under the blanket over Mercy’s lap. “ _I mean, I told her you were joining right away. She’s our only doctor, so she wouldn’t shoot you. Unless it was to death, of course. She’d have to treat you for it otherwise._ ”

Hanzo stopped walking, standing in the middle of the hallway. “ _Genji, how- This cannot possibly work._ ”

Genji turned and stopped as well, then took the few steps back to Hanzo that he had gotten ahead by. “ _What do you mean?_ ”

“ _This-_ ” Hanzo waved a hand, indicating the whole house, the whole situation, “ _this idea of yours, how can it possibly work?_ ” he demanded. “ _These are your teammates. Your doctor. Your friends. They will all hate me, Genji. They cannot possibly accept having me among their number._ ”

Genji shifted his weight from side to side. “ _They will._ ”

“ _How could they after what I did to you?_ ” Hanzo snapped.

“ _Well, most of them don’t know._ ” Genji’s hands flexed. “ _That it was you,_ ” he clarified.

“ _How could they not?_ ” Hanzo asked bitterly.

Genji shrugged stiffly. “ _Everyone who was present then is dead now, except Jesse and Angela,_ ” he said. “ _And my identity as the younger brother of the Clan Head was... privileged information._ ” He held Hanzo’s gaze with his own. “ _The only other person besides them in the Recall who knows it was you is Zenyatta, because I told him. Everyone else has no idea it was you, just that the Clan was involved, if they know anything about it at all. I don’t even think any of them know you once led the Shimada._ ”

“ _Why?_ ” Hanzo asked. “ _Of what possible worth-_ ”

Genji flicked his hand, cutting through Hanzo’s words. “ _Even in Blackwatch, it would have been hard for many to trust the younger brother and heir of the Shimada Head,_ ” he said quietly. “ _And when that was no longer an issue, it was because I wanted no one dealing with you on my behalf._ ” He shrugged again, more fluidly than before. “ _Yes, they are my comrades and my friends. But you are and always will be mine to deal with as I see fit for what happened and no one else’s._ ” His voice was fierce as he finished.

It was hard to formulate a response in the face of Genji’s intensity. “Oh,” was all that Hanzo managed.

Genji nodded, as if Hanzo had been far more eloquent. “ _The others won’t hate you unless you give them a reason to,_ ” he said. “ _Except Jesse, maybe._ ”

“ _Is that why Mercy told you to warn this Jesse of my presence?_ ” Hanzo asked cautiously.

“ _Oh, right._ ” Genji turned and started heading down the hall again, the fingers of his right hand fluttering and ticking oddly in the air. “ _I did need to remember that._ ”

“ _And Mercy hates me,_ ” Hanzo reminded him, following behind. “ _Possibly this Zenyatta too._ ”

“ _Mercy doesn’t trust you, that’s different,_ ” Genji said lightly. “ _She’s never approved of my intention to kill you, she’s always tried to talk me out of it whenever it came up in her hearing. She’s just mad about being surprised._ ”

“ _How are you so certain?_ ” Hanzo asked.

“ _Because I know her well enough to be,_ ” Genji said, sounding distracted.

“ _And what of the other two? Jesse and Zenyatta? How can you be sure they will not poison the other members of the group against me?_ ”

“ _Jesse knows the value of secrets. And he is not the sort who needs to bolster his own feelings by recreating them in others,_ ” Genji answered. “ _And Zenyatta... he says that if I believe a reconciliation between us is what is best for me that he will support it. And he keeps secrets so well that you don’t even realize he knows any at all. You have nothing to fear from him._ ”

Hanzo hissed faintly, considering the way Genji had spoken about them as much as the content of what he had said.

“ _You won’t be in danger from within the Recall,_ ” Genji promised. “ _Make yourself useful, and you’ll even be welcomed._ ”

They walked on a short distance after that, Hanzo lost in thought over Genji’s words as he absently watched the strange fluttering movement of his brother’s fingers in the air as he led the way.

Genji suddenly made an abrupt turn into what appeared to be a pantry closet just outside of the kitchen.

“ _What-?_ ” Hanzo asked as Genji slid his foot under one of the lowest shelves and appeared to grope around there with his toes.

“ _The basement’s special,_ ” Genji said with distraction. “ _So the door is... there it is!_ ”

The side wall of the pantry beeped, then swung itself aside, revealing a staircase leading down. Hanzo was fairly impressed, the seams of the shelves themselves having done an excellent job of disguising the location of the door, and the location of the switch being so difficult for someone to accidentally run across it.

“ _The door will close automatically behind us,_ ” Genji said, leading the way down the stairs.

Hanzo followed, hearing the door beep and close again behind him when he was about four steps down. He assumed that there must be a sensor. When he had passed the halfway point of the steep flight, he started hearing something, a low grumble of a deep-voiced person apparently muttering to themself.

“ _Oh good, Winston is here,_ ” Genji said, then paused on the last step, looking back over his shoulder at Hanzo. “ _Don’t freak out, okay?_ ”

Genji vanished around the corner at the bottom of the stairs. Hanzo hurried to follow him, despite the deep disquiet that his words had given him.

“Good afternoon, Winston,” Genji called in English as Hanzo rounded the corner hot on his heels. “I’ve brought my brother.”

“Oh, good afternoon, Genji,” the massive, full-grown gorilla in white and blue armour — of all things — said, turning away from the workbench it had been leaning over and pushing up the glasses perched incongruously on its broad face to peer at the two of them through them. “Your brother, you say?” Its accent was American, Hanzo noticed somewhat dazedly.

‘Don’t freak out’ indeed. Hanzo drew in a sharp breath, and forcibly gathered his composure.

“Yes Winston, this is my brother, Hanzo,” Genji said, obviously completely at ease. “The one I spoke to you about, remember? The sniper.”

Hanzo managed a shallow, polite bow. “ _Dozo_ ,” he managed, not trusting himself to say anything else. He had never been so close to a gorilla before. It was huge, gargantuan.

“Oh, um, ah, of course,” the gorilla said and bared its teeth in what Hanzo only belatedly realized was meant to be a smile. “So, you’ve decided to join us?” it asked Hanzo.

“I- yes,” Hanzo answered. “I have.” He shot a look at his brother.

“Winston is the leader of the Recall,” Genji explained, apparently taking pity on him.

“Pro-tem!” the gorilla interjected, pushing up its glasses.

“Close enough.” Genji shrugged, then walked over to the ape and leaned what appeared to be his whole weight against its massive shoulder, his fingers moving in those strange ticking motions again.

The gorilla failed to shrug Genji off, instead it shifted slightly to provide more support, to Hanzo’s surprise.

“Well, yes, I suppose,” Winston said in a thoughtful tone. “It’s still several days before we leave, I’m afraid.” It shifted again, reaching for the table to fiddle with several tools laid out over its surface. “I’m not sure where to put you.”

“He can stay in my room,” Genji said easily. “I’m not using it anymore.” There was a certain smugness in the way that he spoke.

“Oh, are you not?” Winston paused in moving tools. “Um... congratulations?”

“Thank you,” Genji practically chirped.

“I will not put you out of your room,” Hanzo protested.

Genji laughed. “I put myself out.” He waved a hand. “I moved in with Jesse a week ago, before I even had the idea to recruit you.”

“Oh,” was all Hanzo could think of to say. Internally, he reeled with surprise. As prolific as Genji had been with his... affection, he had never shown even the slightest indication of any desire for exclusivity with anyone, let alone wanting to ever ‘move in’ with someone.

“Yes, well,” the gorilla adjusted its glasses once again. “Did Genji, I mean, has Genji told you about what we- what you will be expected to, ah, be doing with us?”

Hanzo thought for a moment. “He mentioned that there was need for a sniper,” he answered.

“Ah, yes,” Winston said, nodding. “We, that is, Overwatch make use of snipers often, to cover and clear our exit routes and to, um, keep an eye on enemy movements while the team is carrying out a mission.” It turned over some tool in its massive hands. “Obviously, you speak English... are you comfortable making call-outs in it in, er, the heat of the moment?”

Hanzo considered that question as well before answering. “I believe so,” he said cautiously. “I have worked mainly in Africa and Europe for the past several years, and English is usually the most commonly shared language there that I know.”

“Good, good.” The gorilla nodded. “Have you worked with a team much?”

“Not... often,” Hanzo admitted. “I have fulfilled the role you describe before, however.”

The tool paused in the ape’s hands. “Some practise, then,” Winston mumbled, “once we get back to...” the gorilla’s words died down into vague murmuring.

“Oh, he is planning now,” Genji said, his voice fond and amused.

“Hmm?” Winston hummed distractedly, then blinked at them as if they had only just arrived. “Oh! My apologies!”

“Do not worry,” Genji said, patting him on the shoulder. “You-”

Abruptly, a panel on the far wall that Hanzo had taken for a cabinet beeped and slid open, revealing it to be the door of some sort of elevator containing a giant pachimari plushie being held by someone small enough to only be visible as a pair of skinny legs beneath it and a pair of equally skinny arms wrapped around it.

The pachimari burst into the room the moment the door was fully open. “Win!” a high-pitched woman’s voice fluted from behind it. “I need your ‘elp!”

Genji peered around the gorilla. “Lena?” he asked.

“Wot?” The pachimari lowered and shifted to the side just barely enough to reveal a shock of tousled brown hair and a pair of equally brown eyes below it. “Oh, Genji! Hiya!”

“Lena, what are you- Where did you- A giant pachimari, really?” Winston spluttered.

“It’s for Roadhog!” the woman declared, and heaved the thing up onto a medical bed next to the table Winston had been working at. “’E loves these. But Win, it’s not right, it hasn’t got a squeaker!”

“I should hope not,” Winston sighed.

“But it’s not really a pachimari if it doesn’t squeak!” The woman finally stepped out from behind the giant toy. She was slender, and seemed to be mostly made of limbs and angles — emphasized by the tight leggings and zipped up jacket she wore, with a triangular pixie face marked with a smattering of freckles across her nose and large, expressive eyes. “Oh, who’s this, then?” she asked, catching sight of Hanzo.

“This is my brother,” Genji said. “Hanzo. Hanzo, this is Tracer, our pilot.” He stepped around the gorilla toward the woman. “Hanzo is joining us,” he said to her. “Because we need a sniper.”

“Your brother?” Tracer asked, sounding delighted. “Is he as fast as you?”

Genji laughed. “I fear not,” he said.

“Oh, pity. Would have been fun to get a three-way going,” Tracer sighed with obvious regret.

Hanzo blinked, the words giving him a horrifying mental picture that he prayed was not the intended meaning.

Thankfully, it seemed that Genji was not yet finished taking pity on him. “I fear you are still left with only me as your high-speed sparring partner,” he said, patting the woman on the shoulder.

“Why... are you giving Roadhog a pachimari?” Winston asked, apparently still remaining on the previous topic of conversation.

“I owe ‘im one,” Tracer chirped. “An’ I saw this’un and it just said ‘Roadhog’ t’me. But it needs to squeak! Win, you’ve got to help me!”

“Um...” Winston put down the tool that it had still been holding. “Lena, I don’t know...”

“Oh come on, you’re a genius!” Tracer exclaimed. “I know you can build it a squeaker!”

“I think I will take Hanzo to the room he will be using,” Genji said before Winston could say anything. His fingers were fluttering the air again. “We will leave you to your... squeaker.”

“Ooh, alright,” Tracer said. “Oh! And welcome to Overwatch, mate,” she added to Hanzo.

“I, thank you,” Hanzo said awkwardly, not entirely sure of the appropriate response to being called ‘mate’ by an only very recently introduced stranger. He turned to go back up the stairs.

“No, no,” Genji called him back, beckoning with an odd urgency. “ _The elevator,_ ” he said, switching back to Japanese. “ _It’s- faster._ ”

It sounded strangely like an excuse, but Hanzo had no reason to question it. He went to the elevator.

“ _The bedrooms are all on the second floor,_ ” Genji said as the door slid shut behind them, “ _and those stairs are really far from the basement ones._ ” His fingers stilled from their fluttering as he pressed the button for the second floor.

Hanzo did not shrug, though he did think of doing so very strongly.

Genji was the first one off the elevator when it slid to a stop and the doors opened, his head swivelling rapidly to survey the short hallway they were in.

“ _...both so huge..._ ” Genji muttered softly, “ _impossible to..._ ” He set off to the right without even checking whether Hanzo was following.

Bemused, Hanzo trotted after him, admiring the classic wood floors of the upstairs hall. The second floor was more Western than the first had been, with solid wooden doors on hinges rather than sliding screens. It was also warmer, by a significant margin, he noticed, a pleasant heat that was so often lacking in the early months of spring.

They had made it past two or three of the wide-spaced doors in the hallway they were in when Hanzo started hearing a distinct, rapid thud-jingle and and someone around the corner ahead of them barked “Genji!” with the oddest accent on the vowels that Hanzo thought he had ever heard his brother’s name pronounced with.

Genji’s spine snapped straight at the sound of his name. “ _Oh shit._ ” He reached for the knob of the nearest door, just as someone thundered around the corner.

Hanzo stared.

The man was tall and broad-shouldered, his entire upper torso swathed in a thick crimson and gold fabric, his long legs below that clad in jeans and leather chaps. The source of the thud-jingle proved to be cowboy boots complete with spurs. His face was thickly bearded, brown, and utterly furious beneath a well-worn cowboy hat.

Hanzo had seen him before, only two days ago.

“There y’are,” the cowboy growled, his eyes locking onto them with laser intensity.

Gently, ever so subtly, Genji shifted just enough to be standing in between the angry cowboy and Hanzo without actually seeming to move his feet to do so.

“The fuck are’y thinkin’, bringin’ that-” the man snarled, his accent so thick that his words were nearly incomprehensible to Hanzo. The heat in the air had become oppressive.

“Did you not take off your boots?” Genji demanded, cutting off the man’s torrent mid-word.

The man sucked in a breath through his teeth. “Like I’m gonna stop for niceties when you’re tryin’ t’bring a fratricidal snake in the grass inta our...” he suddenly produced a cigarillo from somewhere under the crimson fabric covering him and shoved it into his mouth.

The image presented snapped into focus in Hanzo’s memory, clarifying something that had been niggling at him since he had seen the man draw a gun on a would-be robber in Ichiraku. An image on a wanted poster, nowhere near as furious as what he was looking at, but with a glare every bit as intense.

“McCree,” he said, the foreign syllables awkward on his tongue. “Your ‘Jesse’ is Jesse McCree.”

The cowboy, McCree’s, attention snapped immediately to Hanzo. He glowered, his brows drawing down darkly.

Genji glanced over his shoulder at Hanzo, his eyes startled.

“You’ve heard o’ me then,” the cowboy, McCree, drawled. “Good.” He snapped on a lighter and lit the cigarillo, baring his teeth.

Hanzo nodded. He didn’t bother with bounties, generally, not wanting the paperwork or attention of collecting on them. That did not, however, mean that he didn’t occasionally check them, just to see who was there and who had been removed. Many of them were competition in his current profession of assassination, after all. Well, possibly former profession of assassination, now.

Jesse McCree, having one of the highest offered bounties in the world, thus had garnered Hanzo’s notice. Especially since he had held that position for nearly ten years already and still had yet to be brought down or unseated from the top ten.

And he was Genji’s ‘Jesse’. The ‘Jesse’ that Genji had just moved in with.

He was, thanks to the current circumstances, absolutely the most dangerous man that Hanzo had ever met.

He was also still staring at Hanzo. “I’ve seen you afore, haven’t I?” he asked. “Recently.”

Hanzo stiffened. He had left Ichiraku as quickly and as discreetly as he could when the guns had come out, not wanting to be recognized by the authorities or any Clan members responding to the incident. It seemed that he had still been noticed anyway, and by what turned out to be the worst possible individual involved.

“You will ruin the _tatami_ , dragging your spurs all over it like that,” Genji complained.

McCree wheeled on Genji. “What’re you goin’ on about that when this-” his English broke off in a torrent of foreign syllables, resembling no language Hanzo had ever heard before.

“He is here because I want him to be!” Genji snapped. “Because I asked him to join us.”

McCree sucked hard on his cigarillo and breathed out a harsh plume of smoke. “Y’said as much in yer text,” he admitted. “I’m still thinkin’ it’s a damnfool idea, bringin’ in a man y’can’t trust t’turn your back on in the name o’ wishful thinkin’ an’ little more’n that.”

Hanzo understood just enough to be stung through the man’s steadily thickening accent. “I would not-” he started to protest.

“This is my choice,” Genji interrupted. “And I do not believe that Hanzo will be a danger to any of us.” He stepped forward, firmly into McCree’s space. “In fact,” he continued persuasively, “I believe that Hanzo is of far less threat to anyone in the Recall than the Junkers are.”

Hanzo held his tongue, surprised by the revelation that somehow Junkers — plural Junkers — had come to join the Overwatch Recall. He couldn’t imagine how, as far as he had ever paid enough attention to know the Australian extremists had rejected everything that Overwatch ever was or had offered after the nuclear disaster in the outback. And yet, Genji would not have brought them up if they weren’t present.

He should have, perhaps, asked a few more questions of his brother as to the nature of the group he had been brought into before they had come to the safehouse.

McCree heaved out a sigh around his already half finished cigarillo.

Genji moved closer and reached out, wrapping his hand around the cowboy’s bicep over the dark red fabric swathing his torso. “Please Jesse,” he said. “Give us this chance to try.”

McCree looked away from Hanzo entirely for the first time to stare down into Genji’s face, his expression unreadable. When he moved, it was to take the cigarillo out of his mouth, the ash falling unheeded to the wooden floor. With his other hand he took Genji’s, lifting it to his mouth to press a kiss to the metal fingers.

“This is what you want?” McCree asked. “What you really want, not anythin’ put in your head?”

Genji swayed in closer, an unconscious movement. “Who puts anything in my mind?” he scoffed.

McCree made a suppressed sound of amusement against the fingers he still held against his mouth. “Alright.” He dropped Genji’s hand and turned back to Hanzo, his expression hardening again as he did. “It goes against my better judgement, but if Genji’s gonna fight so hard for this-” he paused, choosing a word, “experiment, I’ll go along with it. For now.” He put the meagre remains of his cigarillo back between his lips. “I’ll be watchin’ you.”

The cowboy stepped around Genji, his hand sliding along the line of the cyborg’s waist as he moved toward Hanzo and then shouldered past him.

“Jesse-” Genji said, spinning around to face them.

“I’m for havin’ some words with Winston,” McCree said, “’bout some probationary limits on our... newest members. T’make sure they behave themselves.” A warning hung heavily in his words, hard and sharp in his tone. “Then I think I’ll be takin’ myself to the garden t’finish a pack.”

“I’ll find you there, then,” Genji said, “later.”

McCree stopped and looked over his shoulder at them. “Best not,” he said heavily. “Got some thinkin’ I’ll be doin’.”

“Ah, very well,” Genji agreed.

McCree gave a single, slow nod, then continued around the corner to the elevator, which beeped a moment or two later.

Hanzo took a slow, deep breath, feeling a slow easing of the oppressive atmosphere that McCree had brought with him.

Genji rolled his shoulders, closing his eyes.

“ _I have, my presence here has made him very angry with you,_ ” Hanzo said in Japanese into the tense silence McCree had left behind. “ _I am sorry,_ ” he added miserably.

Genji’s eyes popped open. “ _At me?_ ” he repeated, sounding amused. “ _Oh no, he’s not mad at me, brother._ ” His tone laughed, implying that the cowboy’s anger had apparently been all for Hanzo.

“ _But he-_ ” Hanzo started, baffled. “ _You offered him company, and he..._ ”

“ _Just because McCree wishes to be alone to think doesn’t mean he’s angry at me._ ” Genji shrugged, and turned back down the hall. “ _It just means he wants to think. If he was angry enough with me to specifically not want my company he would have said so._ ”

Hanzo considered the confrontation they had just undergone, and had to admit that McCree had never actually admitted to being angry at Genji, as angry as he obviously had been.

“ _Jesse is very... protective of what he chooses to keep close,_ ” Genji said, opening a door that was only two down the hall from where the confrontation had taken place. “ _It will be a very long time before he stops seeing you as a threat, if he ever does._ ”

The room he had led Hanzo into was decadently large and appointed more like a hotel room than a traditional bedroom, with a large Western bed pushed against one wall, a small entertainment system, an utter plethora of electrical plugs, and a writing desk. The window looked out to a view of blooming cherry trees in what had to be the back garden of the house, giving Hanzo a sudden pang of homesick loss. His childhood bedroom had looked out to the cherry trees of the Castle.

“ _This was my room, whenever we used the safehouse,_ ” Genji said unnecessarily.

Hanzo clutched his hotel bag in both hands, suddenly uncertain and unwilling to set it down. Everything loomed around him, overwhelming and filled with insurmountable barriers. He swayed in place, drowning in unanswerable questions that swirled in his mind.

“ _Genji,_ ” he said. “ _How can we possibly... This reconciliation, this being as brothers to each other again... How could we possibly do such a thing with-_ ” He made an abortive movement to wave a hand at everything, only to find that he couldn’t bring himself to release his hold on his bag to do so. “ _With everything that has happened between us?_ ” he ended brokenly, unable to shape the words to name the myriad of shattered things that had pushed them inexorably apart from each other.

Genji turned from where he had been dragging his finger through a faint layer of dust on the writing desk and regarded Hanzo steadily, his gaze unwavering.

“ _The only thing to do,_ ” Genji said at last, still not looking away, “ _is to try, and to see where that brings us._ ”

He said it as if it was the simplest thing in the world, and stated that way, it was, somehow, just that.

Hanzo put down his bag.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for sticking with me to the end of this fic! I hope everyone enjoyed the ride. As a reward, I leave you with the mental image of Tracer getting that giant pachi all the way to her room, setting it gently on the floor, then hurling her entire self at it, only to be devastated when it doesn't squeak.
> 
> And now, the final easter egg: Hanzo willfully misinterpreted both Winston and Genji, and moved into Genji’s former room back at the Recall’s base as well despite a variety of other options being available. Since that means he’s living in the medic quarters Mercy has ruthlessly put him to work in the medbay as a janitor, candystriper(/babysitter of patients that are difficult to keep in bed), nurse assistant, and general dogsbody.


End file.
